4 highlights from Columbia's budget work session

The Columbia City Council is gearing up for the marathon of public hearings and discussions about the 2024 fiscal year budget in August and September. It moved off the starting line Saturday in a budget work session with city staff after City Manager De'Carlon Seewood delivered his budget message Thursday.

More: Columbia needs to keep pace with changes, says city manager in budget message

This was a chance for the council to ask initial questions of staff in case there are any budget amendments members would like to bring by the Sept. 5 council meeting at the latest. Final approval of the budget is set for the Sept. 18 meeting. The official budget introduction and its first reading are on Monday's council agenda.

Major highlights of Saturday's meeting were the planned creation of a Housing and Neighborhood Programs Department, potential transit system adjustments, final implementation of the OpenGov dashboard and revenue and expense forecasting past the 2024 fiscal year.

Housing and Neighborhood Programs

Seewood touted the creation of the Housing and Neighborhood Programs Department, or HNP, in Thursday's budget message as one of the major new decision items in the 2024 budget. These two programs are currently under the Community Development Department umbrella.

In separating these divisions into their own department, it allows the city to expand the scope of work these city employees will do. Lateral moves of employees from Community Development to HNP are likely, and the city also will look to hire a department director after the new fiscal year starts Oct. 1.

The department will focus on affordable housing programs, so funding sources such as community development block grants and other U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funds will follow the department's creation.

"We are going to have to figure out how to incentivize (affordable housing) and part of the mission of this department is how we do that," Seewood said, adding this means reviewing other communities and the ways in which they incentivize affordable housing, noting the city already has one incentive program, the homeownership assistance program.

Seewood said the department will operate out of the former Jones, Powell and Stevens law firm building on Seventh Street. The law firm has moved to 414 E. Broadway.

Neighborhood services, such as those looking at quality of life, volunteerism will transfer into the new department, staff said.

Transit system adjustments

Go CoMo bus operators have worked under mandatory overtime for nearly two years. The city in August will indefinitely compress bus routes from six to three as one solution to the overtime issue, due to lack of available staffing.

Negotiations with staff union members, along with planned raises and the results of the classification and compensation study could go toward retaining staff within Columbia Public Works, which oversees Go CoMo.

Another issue for Go CoMo is revenue. For the last few years, buses have operated at no charge for their users.

While the city has budgeted 2024 as another fare-free year, a discussion on fares likely could happen after the start of the fiscal year.

More: Columbia union employees demonstrate on labor dispute during State of the City address

"The (public transportation) fund is going to need assistance and we are going to find ourselves in a deficit. We actually are going to transfer $1 million from the transportation sales tax to transit the help cover their shortfalls," said Andrea Greer, city budget officer. "Do we remain fare free or do we have some sort of other plan available."

The recent $23 million U.S. Department of Transportation RAISE grant received by the city cannot be used to shore up Go CoMo's operational budget.

The city has received a contract back from a consultant for a new transit study and it currently is under review by the city's law and other departments, said Shane Creech, public works director. The study likely will take the entirety of fiscal year 2024. Results of the study, which could include revenue enhancements, will be part of fiscal year 2025 considerations.

"The study will be wide-ranging. As you all know, there are folks that want us to do a lot more than we already do and we are having trouble doing what we already do. It will be what our long-term goals are in the future," Creech said.

Open Gov Dashboard

The city met with representatives of Open Gov last June, a cloud-based financial reporting platform that will give the city more financial transparency through a public-facing dashboard.

The city initiated the incorporation of Open Gov into city processes in May. By mid-November, it will be fully implemented and accessible by Columbia residents. It initially will include the 2024 fiscal budget. General examples of public-facing and internal dashboards were shared in the budget work session presentation prepared by staff.

Staff also shared the Winchester, Virginia, finance department's website to show a live example of an Open Gov dashboard.

"I think it will be extremely helpful for everyone to use," Greer said.

"It will definitely make the budget more interactive," added Matthew Lue, Columbia Finance Department director. "It will give more clarity to a lot of different parts of the budget, where it's not just numbers and words on pages."

The city can develop additional narratives about certain budget items or projects, Greer said. An enterprise resource administrator is the main staff person behind ensuring Open Gov is kept up-to-date, she said.

Revenue/expense forecasting

Even though property tax revenues are likely to stay steady and sales tax revenues are expected to increase over the next few years, when it comes to the city's general fund, expenses could start to outpace revenue starting in fiscal year 2025 based on budget forecasting.

This is because revenues are starting to level out, even with additional revenue from online sales use tax and expected recreational marijuana sales tax, finance department staff said. The city will have to start looking for revenue enhancements or ways to cut expenses.

Enhancements potentially could include ballot questions, Seewood said.

"It's having those hard conversations, but they are important for us to do that as we are looking at developing next year's budget. That will be part of a long conversation," he said. "The demand for services is going up and our ability to generate revenue isn't keeping pace with those expenditures. We have to have a hard look at what our revenues are and what they can be."

Charles Dunlap covers local government, community stories and other general subjects for the Tribune. You can reach him at cdunlap@columbiatribune.com or @CD_CDT on Twitter. Subscribe to support vital local journalism.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: 4 highlights from Columbia's budget work session