City coffers: Big or small, communities vary in the amound they spend per capita
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No Comments [ Add Comment ]By D.B. Troester
Standard-Examiner staff
See complete list of cities' per capita spending below.
SNOWVILLE -- For every living soul in Snowville, the town pays $41 to support dead souls there.
Four percent of the municipal budget, or $7,000, goes to support the town cemetery. That's nearly six times the amount Snowville pays for landfill services, more than double what it pays for recreation and $1,000 more than it pays to maintain the town park.
"We're always in the red on the cemetery," said Snowville Mayor Michael Morgan.
Cemetery maintenance in the town is one basic service that contributes to annual costs, making Snowville the highest per capita spender in the Top of Utah. The municipality spends $1,032 per capita, the highest amount among 48 cities and towns whose spending was studied by the Standard-Examiner.
"We are just a really small community," said Gloria Morgan, town clerk/recorder. She compiled the fiscal 2007 general fund budget of $175,400, approved by the Town Council in June. Snowville has 170 residents, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau estimate; as many as 600 people are buried in the town cemetery.
"When you're talking about a population base that small, it doesn't take much to increase spending per capita," said Mike Jerman, vice president of Utah Taxpayers Association, a Salt Lake City-based organization that promotes efficient use of tax dollars.
However, the Standard-Examiner study reveals per capita spending is not necessarily tied to population.
Cities and towns of all sizes, in all Top of Utah counties, ranked high, low and in the middle in per capita spending.
Three cities in Davis County (Clinton, North Salt Lake and West Bountiful), three in Weber County (West Haven, Riverdale and Marriott-Slaterville) and three in Box Elder County (Snowville, Mantua and Tremonton) ranked in the Top 10, as did Logan in Cache County.
Another small Box Elder County community, Bear River City, with $211 in per capita spending, ranked 48th, last on the list. Bear River has a population of 800 and a fiscal 2007 general fund budget of $168,584.
"We try to be frugal and we don't have a lot of money to work with," said Bear River City Recorder Carol Andreasen.
Ogden ranked 11th with $604 in per capita spending. Layton ranked 21st at $476 and Morgan ranked 18th with $511.
Below the Top of Utah, Salt Lake City, population 178,097, spends 2 percent more per capita than Snowville, or $1,052, with a general fund budget of $187.3 million. The study looked at six cities in Salt Lake County, which are not in the Top of Utah ranking, but are listed for comparison.
Budget anomalies
There are some anomalies in the study. A few municipalities, such as Clinton, amended their budgets after the beginning of the fiscal year, July 1, but most communities that needed to make amendments have waited until this calendar year.
Clinton ranked third on the list with $897 in per capita spending. The Davis County city has 17,735 residents, according to the Census Bureau, and budgeted $15.9 million in this year's general fund budget. That's more than double the amount budgeted last year.
Much of that increase, however, is attributed to a $10.4 million sale of a 31-acre park and city hall. That inflated the city's budgeted expenditures for construction of a new park and city hall, said City Manager Dennis Cluff. However, most of those budget expenses have been transferred from the general fund into a capital-expense fund, Cluff said.
That transfer lowered Clinton's budget to about $8.6 million, or $485 per capita, which would drop its ranking from third to 20th.
Other cities with higher revenues from industrial and commercial areas, such as North Salt Lake and Riverdale, ranked higher in the survey. North Salt Lake was sixth at $819 and Riverdale ranked fifth with $824 per capita.
"North Salt Lake hasn't been known as a bedroom community. We've got a large industrial tax base and a relatively small population," said City Manager Collin Wood. "That's probably why we rank so high up on the list."
Cities with higher employment bases, such as Salt Lake City and Ogden, typically ranked higher because the cities fund services that are used by daytime employees who return to their homes in other municipalities after the work day ends.
Size matters?
While city size appears to have little bearing on per capita spending, it does affect what a city pays to provide services to residents. Clinton spends $1.71 million for police; $732,000 for the fire department; $200,000 for ambulance services; $865,000 for recreation, and $460,000 for park maintenance, among other expenses.
The city has 56 full-time and 40 part-time employees, as well as another 150-200 seasonal employees, mostly teens who work in the recreation program and in Public Works in the summer.
Comparatively, Snowville spends nothing for police (Box Elder Sheriff's deputies police the town); $32,000 for the fire department; $31,000 for ambulance services; $3,100 for recreation; and $6,000 for parks.
The town has five part-time employees. One is seasonal.
Town officials say it is expensive to provide the most basic services such as road maintenance, as well as ambulance and fire protection, which covers an area as far as 100 miles in circumference around Snowville.
The town has 24 volunteer firefighters and 16 volunteer emergency medical technicians.
The EMTs rotate two-week shifts of 24-hour on-call duty. The firefighters are always on call.
"Everybody does a lot of stuff in this town to survive," said Alan Terry, a volunteer EMT, who also sits on the town's water board.
He believes the Town Council does a good job to stretch taxpayer dollars. "They're pretty tight about how they spend their money," he said. His wife, Shanna Terry, sits on the Town Council.
Spend more and less
When per capita spending is compared from fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2007, Clinton ranks first with a 99 percent increase, due to the $10.4 million infusion of capital from the sale of the town park and city hall.
Second on the list is Syracuse, with a 77 percent increase in per capita spending.
The city's general fund budget increased from $4.18 million in fiscal 2006 to $8.12 million in fiscal 2007. That's mostly attributed to budgeting changes required by the state to move about $3 million in park development and impact fees from separate funds in fiscal 2006 into the general fund budget in fiscal 2007, said Syracuse Treasurer LaMar Holt.
About another $1 million of the increase is to provide payroll and benefits to 11 new employees.
Syracuse's full-time work force increased from 56 to 67 in the last year.
Deweyville's per capita spending increased 59 percent, ranking it third in the Top of Utah, and West Haven ranks fourth in both per capita spending and in its year-over increase, 53 percent.
Bonds, too
West Haven's fiscal 2006 general fund budget was $2.94 million. It rose to $4.79 million in fiscal 2007. The city spent about $750,000 to retire sales tax revenue bond debt on the new city hall this fiscal year, which inflated the general fund budget.
And in fiscal 2006, the city funded a $1.4 million public works maintenance building in the general fund budget, said West Haven Treasurer Steven Davis.
"That's what really kind of increases the per capita spending," he said. Those type of one-time expenses skew a per-capita ranking, he said.
Snowville, on the other hand, had the largest decline in per capita spending, a 56 percent drop due to about $200,000 in grant-funded expenditures for a new fire truck and ambulance in fiscal 2006, which inflated that year's budget.
The general fund budget dropped from $409,600 in fiscal 2006 to $175,400 in fiscal 2007.
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