It's hard. What you see is not necessarily what you get. At the highest level, the city expects to spend $242.4 million dollars in fiscal 2013 (the year beginning Oct. 1, 2012), slightly less than we will spend this year; and to take in $170.7 million, for a deficit of about $71.7 million. (For the actual numbers, see http://www.killeentexas.gov/pdf/finance/FY%2012-13%20Proposed%20Budget.pdf p. ii.) Sounds totally scary, right?
In a way the numbers are deceptive. No one is going after tax- and rate-payers next year to make up a shortfall that amounts to $550 for every man, woman and child in the city. Part of the money we've already borrowed; part of it we will. But we will pay for it all over the next 25 years.
There's no way to make decisions about the budget at that high level. You have to look at the individual pieces, which the city breaks down (for budgeting and accounting purposes) into funds, each of which has its own expenditures and revenues and can be thought of as something like a "profit center": an individual activitiy that can be managed, at least in part, independently of other activities of the city government.
Yesterday we took a brief look at the largest of these funds, the General Fund, out of which many city services are paid for. We'll return to that fund because it is large and contains some discretionary elements. But it's only carrying a $2.3 million deficit for 2013. Where's the rest of the deficit? The bulk of it, as you would expect, is in the Capital Projects Funds, which is what we'll look at in the next installment.
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