The City of Bloomington continues to work through its budget process for Fiscal Year 2023/2024 which is currently at $290 million. This week focus shifted to the General Fund which is $129 million.
Finance Director Scott Rathbun told us, “We are just kind of expanding into some general details because the total has not changed at all so the General fund is the largest fund of the city. That’s 44% of the total. So tonight we went through kind of a by function departmental review.”
The top four Departments funded out of the General Fund are;
- Public Safety at $65 million which is 50% of the fund,
- Parks and Recreation at $15 million which is 12%,
- Administration at $11 million, 9% and
- Public Works at $10 million, 8%.
Together these four Departments receive $101 million of the $129 million which is 78% of the fund.
Noting that even though Public Safety includes Police, Fire and the 911 system, it still might seem to some that the fact they receive 50% of the fund is high, we asked Rathbun about it.
Rathbun said, “I think, I’d have to look at Normal or some other communities, but they have Public Safety considering pensions and there is a significant portion of that. It’s for making up for underfunding prior years. I think it’s about $9 million. It’s being put into the pension. It’s related to catch up interest.”
We asked Rathbun how looking at capital projects was going and he replied, “We went through the $70 million roughly of capital projects by project. The Department Heads described each and every one of those projects. What’s the need? Why are we executing them? So we had the Parks Director talk about all the parks enhancements and the trail. We had our Facilities Manager talk about City Hall.”
Assistant City Manager Billy Tyus echoed similar thoughts when we spoke with him saying, “One of the things we tend to try and do is to over communicate some of the things that are happening when it relates to our budget and giving the public an opportunity to speak to any questions that they would have. So tonight again was really … a repeating and a re-describing of some of the things that are happening.”
Tyus then pivoted to capital projects on his own saying, “The thing that I think is important to mention is the investment in capital projects, specifically streets and sidewalks. It’s important, because one of the top questions that we get from people is, what are you doing about the conditions of our streets? We have heard the people say that and we have heard the council say that.”
“And so I think it’s worth mentioning that proposed in this next years budget is proposed spending of $10 million on streets and sidewalks,” Tyus continued. “And it will also be our goal to provide that amount of funding over the next several years, as to where, if we look at a five year run for next year and the four years following we are going to be spending $60 to $65 million, pending council approval, on streets and sidewalks.”
“It’s a big number in our opinion,” Tyus went on to say. And we just want the public to know that they spoke and we have heard them. I think its also worth mentioning that, that $10 million funding amount is four times what the city was spending back in 2016, 2017 which again is a large increase.”
