City budget slated to grow

CITY HALL — As the city enters fiscal 2007-08 budget sessions, city departments across the board are seeing increases in the funds they'll need, due, in part, to rising salary and benefits costs.

The growth was expected as the city had already entered into several multi-year Memoranda of Understanding with city employee bargaining groups, which brought salary boosts, said Financial Services Director Bob Torrez.

An increase to Public Employees Retirement System, or PERS, rates, which are applied to base salaries, also added to expenditures from the city's general fund, he said.

General fund resources are projected at $138,744,334, which is 19% of the city's $728,176,260 in total revenues, according to the Financial Services Department.

That total is about 9% higher than the $666,948,415 figure adopted for the fiscal year 2006-07 budget.

At a budget study session on Tuesday, the council listened to budget proposal overviews from the City Manager, Public Information, Information Technology, Financial Services and Public Works departments, as well as the Burbank Fire Department. As a part of those overviews, department representatives also introduced goals for new programs or upgrades of city services.

Representatives from the city manager's office are asking for an appropriation of $44,000 to contract with a professional Web-design company to redesign the city's website, which has not been updated in six years. The upgrade would make it more accessible and user-friendly.

The Public Information office added a new account to its budget to fund the new Granicus system, which will, among other things, allow the city to archive council meetings via the World Wide Web. That system carries a maintenance services cost of $7,500.

To maintain a $340,000 balance in an Information Technology holding account that is used to procure technology not anticipated in the main budget, that department is asking for a $68,000 appropriation, said department director Jennifer Wyatt.

The department is also looking to upgrade employee positions to make those positions commensurate with responsibilities inherent in the jobs, a request the Financial Services Department also requested.