It’s now budget time. Each year the city starts its budget around June or July and works towards a budget to address next years needs. The process starts with staff looking at their department needs and expenses and making decisions about where we need to go with it. These are then brought together to see what the bottom line looks like. Along the way we address questions like what are our equipment needs, what capital projects might we consider for this next year, and where are our costs going with payroll and other related expenses.
Once the staff has assembled a draft council gets involved with a review of the numbers and they too make decisions concerning the thresholds established in departments and line accounts. They also look towards capital projects or initiatives that they would like to see accomplished in the upcoming year.
Another important factor in developing the budget is understanding the impact. In other words what is the rate of taxation we anticipate based on last years amount. Given our cycles of valuations for properties we don’t see what our final tax capacity is until late in the year, typically December. So understanding impact is difficult in that we use last year’s data as a base. Typically cites see construction throughout the year and anticipate some growth in values. This year we have changes in values due to market conditions and also a loss of value due to detachment.
The process of the budget continues with a preliminary levy certified to the county no later than September 15th. This amount is the amount that goes on Truth in Taxation notices and it is also the maximum amount the city can tax for the upcoming year. The city continues to work the budget to hopefully additionally decrease the amount of the levy. The Truth in Taxation meeting and final levy occur in December.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
The Rains Have Been Coming
The city of Breezy Point has lots of activities and things going on, on a daily basis. One of the more routine and continual matters this year seems to be road maintenance particularly when it comes to drainage. As you all know we live with granular soils here. You know, sand and gravel. We have some areas with limited clay and also areas of peat soils but the sand and gravel create the most problems with erosion.
After almost every rain event of any significance we get calls to fix the road to deal with an accumulation of materials from erosion or a wash out of a section of roadway. The majority of or road system was built without adequate drainage systems. In some instances drainage was provided for when the roads were originally built but over time erosion of materials has filled these drainage ways. In addressing these public works is constantly on the lookout for problems and responding to calls. We attempt to get grading of these roads done when needed and practicable. We have had some successes is solving problems over time. We have had setbacks where every rain event causes problems.
We continue to accomplish these efforts but as we move forward a couple of things need to be looked at. The first involves the construction of paved roadways. The city in the distant past has just paved over existing roadways. This provided a durable surface but really didn’t deal adequately with drainage. We’ve been looking at these issues with any project to make sure drainage is a part of the project so we can reduce the ongoing problems for residents as well as public works.
The other thing, that is more of a long range project, is that of a storm sewer utility or improvement districts. Here we’ll take a big picture look at storm water runoff and find solutions that can be maintained and provide better utility into the future. This effort hasn’t taken a priority yet but will be something the city intends to look at in the future.
Thank you for your patience with these issues. Our public works crew does a great job but with 65 miles of roadways to maintain they are at times stretched thin. We don’t inspect every roadway daily so your calls are welcome but also keep in mind the solutions don’t always come easy.
After almost every rain event of any significance we get calls to fix the road to deal with an accumulation of materials from erosion or a wash out of a section of roadway. The majority of or road system was built without adequate drainage systems. In some instances drainage was provided for when the roads were originally built but over time erosion of materials has filled these drainage ways. In addressing these public works is constantly on the lookout for problems and responding to calls. We attempt to get grading of these roads done when needed and practicable. We have had some successes is solving problems over time. We have had setbacks where every rain event causes problems.
We continue to accomplish these efforts but as we move forward a couple of things need to be looked at. The first involves the construction of paved roadways. The city in the distant past has just paved over existing roadways. This provided a durable surface but really didn’t deal adequately with drainage. We’ve been looking at these issues with any project to make sure drainage is a part of the project so we can reduce the ongoing problems for residents as well as public works.
The other thing, that is more of a long range project, is that of a storm sewer utility or improvement districts. Here we’ll take a big picture look at storm water runoff and find solutions that can be maintained and provide better utility into the future. This effort hasn’t taken a priority yet but will be something the city intends to look at in the future.
Thank you for your patience with these issues. Our public works crew does a great job but with 65 miles of roadways to maintain they are at times stretched thin. We don’t inspect every roadway daily so your calls are welcome but also keep in mind the solutions don’t always come easy.
Friday, July 9, 2010
I Think We Solved It
Sometimes what happens surprises you. It is sort of a Murphy’s law thing in reverse. Murphy’s Law deals with the pessimistic perspective. If it can go wrong it usually does. However here I’m looking at the positive side of the issue I wrote about last week.
I really didn’t think we’d be able to get the cable audio fixed so that the playback could be heard in time for the July council meeting. We had tried everything we could think of and called the service technician and left a message. He was out of town for the July 4th holiday so our hope of seeing him on the 6th of July was not looking good. But he showed up, considered our problem and found a solution.
The fix was a bit technical in nature as we had to change some wires around and also needed to be careful the audio volume for the recording isn’t recorded too high. I think the problem is solved. I do know at the meeting thatthere was some audio issues in the beginning which were taken care of so volumes may have been too high to start with. I’m hoping this settled down as we moved forward with adjustments. We didn't want too strong of an output. In any event the recording volume was increased and hopefully we can hear the audio in the broadcast of the council meeting.
If you have feedback concerning the volume level we’d like to hear it. It is a bit of a work in progress as we need to address the recording volume here to deal with the broadcast equipment used for playback. We need to find the correct volume here to balance it there as it seems no two pieces of equipment playback the same. Please bear with us as we try to get it right.
I know some of you were concerned and called with complaints. Others had patience with us. I thank both groups for your concerns. With any luck we’ll zero in on the right levels soon. The good news is it didn’t require an expense for new equipment upgrades, only the technician’s time. Our thanks go out to Romane at UCT Technology of St. Michael for getting us on track.
I really didn’t think we’d be able to get the cable audio fixed so that the playback could be heard in time for the July council meeting. We had tried everything we could think of and called the service technician and left a message. He was out of town for the July 4th holiday so our hope of seeing him on the 6th of July was not looking good. But he showed up, considered our problem and found a solution.
The fix was a bit technical in nature as we had to change some wires around and also needed to be careful the audio volume for the recording isn’t recorded too high. I think the problem is solved. I do know at the meeting thatthere was some audio issues in the beginning which were taken care of so volumes may have been too high to start with. I’m hoping this settled down as we moved forward with adjustments. We didn't want too strong of an output. In any event the recording volume was increased and hopefully we can hear the audio in the broadcast of the council meeting.
If you have feedback concerning the volume level we’d like to hear it. It is a bit of a work in progress as we need to address the recording volume here to deal with the broadcast equipment used for playback. We need to find the correct volume here to balance it there as it seems no two pieces of equipment playback the same. Please bear with us as we try to get it right.
I know some of you were concerned and called with complaints. Others had patience with us. I thank both groups for your concerns. With any luck we’ll zero in on the right levels soon. The good news is it didn’t require an expense for new equipment upgrades, only the technician’s time. Our thanks go out to Romane at UCT Technology of St. Michael for getting us on track.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Council Meeting Broadasts
For some time now the city has struggled with the audio portion of the DVD recording of the council meeting. The audio portion of the meeting was and is of poor quality requiring volumes to be turned up to the maximum to hear. Even with that there is background noise or a hum.
The audio in the council chambers is great so we know most of the system is functioning fine. We also really didn’t understand this as the playback of the disk had reasonable sound on other devices. So we felt the playback in the rebroadcasting was the problem. Either their equipment was at fault or the playback volume level was set too low. Over the last few months we came to realize that this maybe a contributing factor but it seemed that the audio volume had further declined and needed to be addressed.
As we tried to solve the problem we tried a couple of different things that could be the cause such as a faulty plug-in or wire. This didn’t seem to do anything. We swapped out the DVD recorder to a different machine. Here we thought at first it was better with a louder audio but it really was not. We found a setting on the back of the machine which looked like it may work but it didn’t increase volume but rather dealt with another issue with the audio playback.
After calling our audio technician he suggested a few things which either didn’t work or wasn’t available on the equipment we have. He then suggested an audio amplifier to plug into the DVD recorder. We thought this would surely solve the problem.
The package finally arrived, after 3 weeks of waiting. The technician labeled everything so we knew exactly how to install it. We noted that the unit came with an adjustable gain and we hoped that the sound volume could even be increased to a level that could be too loud for playback.
After making the installation and testing the unit by recording at a number of different gain settings, the volume level seemed to be better at the highest setting. The playback however, using a different machine, was a very big disappointment. The playback volume doesn’t need to be set to the maximum level now, only slightly lower than that.
Our technician has been contacted and we had hopes he’d solve the problem for the July meeting but it appears that won’t happen. We’re uncertain where the problem lies and hope it can be remedied quickly, easily, and at a low cost. Our determination to fix the problem is there, my hope is we can solve the problem soon.
The audio in the council chambers is great so we know most of the system is functioning fine. We also really didn’t understand this as the playback of the disk had reasonable sound on other devices. So we felt the playback in the rebroadcasting was the problem. Either their equipment was at fault or the playback volume level was set too low. Over the last few months we came to realize that this maybe a contributing factor but it seemed that the audio volume had further declined and needed to be addressed.
As we tried to solve the problem we tried a couple of different things that could be the cause such as a faulty plug-in or wire. This didn’t seem to do anything. We swapped out the DVD recorder to a different machine. Here we thought at first it was better with a louder audio but it really was not. We found a setting on the back of the machine which looked like it may work but it didn’t increase volume but rather dealt with another issue with the audio playback.
After calling our audio technician he suggested a few things which either didn’t work or wasn’t available on the equipment we have. He then suggested an audio amplifier to plug into the DVD recorder. We thought this would surely solve the problem.
The package finally arrived, after 3 weeks of waiting. The technician labeled everything so we knew exactly how to install it. We noted that the unit came with an adjustable gain and we hoped that the sound volume could even be increased to a level that could be too loud for playback.
After making the installation and testing the unit by recording at a number of different gain settings, the volume level seemed to be better at the highest setting. The playback however, using a different machine, was a very big disappointment. The playback volume doesn’t need to be set to the maximum level now, only slightly lower than that.
Our technician has been contacted and we had hopes he’d solve the problem for the July meeting but it appears that won’t happen. We’re uncertain where the problem lies and hope it can be remedied quickly, easily, and at a low cost. Our determination to fix the problem is there, my hope is we can solve the problem soon.
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