Ogden City looking to spend excess general fund revenues ahead of new fiscal year
A technician from Young Electric Sign Company changes out a transformer in the Ogden arch stretching over Washington Boulevard on Friday, Oct. 7, 2016.
In this photo taken in June 2020, an Ogden City fire engine is pictured in the intersection of 24th Street and Washington Boulevard in downtown Ogden.
OGDEN — For a year that initially included dire economic forecasts, the good news about Ogden City’s current financial situation keeps coming.
While the city is currently in the process of developing a new budget to cover the upcoming fiscal year, which begins on July 1, officials are also working to identify how they can best spend excess revenues that will be left over from the current budget.
Ogden Comptroller Lisa Stout said the city administration wants to amend Ogden’s current year budget to fund nearly $4 million in various city capital improvement projects and pay for some new equipment for the Ogden Fire Department.
Last year at this time, while the city was working on its budget, officials crafted the document under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, Mayor Mike Caldwell called the budget the most conservative of his then nine-year tenure.
The city instituted several cost-cutting measures, like doing away with customary employee raises. The salary increases were eventually reinstated, with employees getting a bump in pay in April and a retroactive payment for the months they went without their standard raises. But the other cost-saving measures in the budget remained.
Ogden’s Management Services Director Mara Brown previously told the City Council that the city programmed a 17% reduction in sales tax revenue from the prior year — a figure that was recommended by the Utah League of Cities and Towns and some other third-party financial experts. The city was also expecting a decrease in licensing and permit revenue, but the losses never happened.
A report from the Wasatch Front Regional Council that utilizes data from Utah State Tax Commission shows that despite the unprecedented pandemic, taxable sales in Utah went up 8.4% in 2020, compared to 2019. Ogden’s sales tax revenue went up by about 8%, according to the report, which ties back to the administration’s current proposal.
Prior to this year’s legislative session, state law required that a city’s general fund balance could not exceed 25% of the total money in the fund in given fiscal year. The fund balance is an accumulation of revenues, minus expenditures.
The comptroller’s office estimates the city could be over the 25% mark by some $5 million at the end of the current fiscal year. The Legislature amended the fund balance accumulation percentage to 35% this year, but the measure did not become effective until May 5, 2021, so it doesn’t apply to the city’s current budget.
“We’re in a great position as a city right now,” Stout said. “We have excess fund balance and we need to spend that down.”
In addition to paying for nearly $500,000 in new equipment for firefighters, the city administration wants to put $3.7 million toward a host of capital improvement projects. The projects include improvements at Orchard, Monroe and Grandview parks, the East Side Dog Park, Serge Simmons and Miles Goodyear Casteel fields, the Lorin Farr pool, the Ogden Archway sign on Washington Boulevard, the Dumke Arts Plaza and a few other maintenance and design items.
Stout said many of projects have already been approved for Weber County RAMP funding, which she said allows the city to better leverage its money.