2022 Budget season is here!
The city budget is the most important activity your elected officials participate in every year. Why? Because budget = priorities. The budget demonstrates what is important to the city. I will be bringing forward amendments that reflect the values I hold for the city. I encourage you to speak up about what you care about as well.
Please take a look below for public hearing dates, how to download and look at the budget yourself, key highlights to help you understand how Fitchburg spends money, and links to department presentations from recent Finance Committee meetings.
THE NEXT STEP IS ALDER AMENDMENTS, which alders must submit by Thursday 10/14 and will be released to the public on 10/22.
SAVE THE DATES
PUBLIC HEARING ON OCTOBER 12 at 7:30 p.m.
Your first chance to comment on what you’d like to see in the city budget. This is two days before alder amendments are due, so if you would like to see a change happen, I encourage you to reach out to your alders in advance.COUNCIL DISCUSSION ON OCTOBER 27 at 7:00 p.m.
This Committee of the Whole Meeting is focused on discussion of budget amendments. This is where the majority of discussion will take place and your chance to see where your alders stand. Amendments cannot be proposed on the floor.PUBLIC HEARING ON NOVEMBER 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Your last chance to advocate for issues and changes to the budget. Alders will have submitted amendments already and amendments cannot be proposed on the floor. The discussion among alders is limited during this meeting. This is the meeting where amendments will be voted up or down, followed by a vote on the entire 2022 budget.
NAVIGATING THE CITY BUDGET
The full budget document is long and detailed, but if you download it and open it in Adobe Reader, on the left side there is a bookmark icon that will show a clickable index of everything included in the budget. For those viewing online or a downloaded copy on your computer, Ctrl + F on your computer keys will allow you to search the document for key words.
INTERESTING HIGHLIGHTS
I wanted to highlight a few interesting sections, charts and visuals that show what the city spends money on to serve residents.
CITY TAX IMPACT ANALYSIS
Page 12 is a chart that shows you where precisely property tax income is being spent. I highlighted the sections you should notice in yellow. The average assessed home value in Fitchburg going into 2022 is $330,100 which will yield a property tax bill of $2,614.28 (remember, this is only the city portion of your taxes, you also pay county, school, etc.). Out of that property tax payment, you can see precisely how much of your tax money goes to each Fitchburg department.
Do your property taxes go where you would like them to go?
CITY REVENUES FOR GENERAL FUND
Looking to page 16, you’ll notice that the property tax impact analysis is crucial to understanding the city budget, because property taxes make up 75.19% of the general fund revenue. The fact that property taxes are the main source of revenue is a fact that’s true for all cities, towns and villages in Wisconsin, as we cannot levy income taxes or sales tax at this level of government, which is different than in other states.
CITY EXPENDITURES FOR GENERAL FUND
Looking to page 15 and going back to how the city spends the revenue it receives (including property taxes), these charts visually show that in two ways. The first by category (Public Works, Conservation, Public Safety, etc.). Take a look.
The second chart shows the breakdown by class. You will notice that almost 3/4 of the city’s expenditures pay for city staff (personnel), which includes the engineers, librarians, snow plow drivers, building inspectors, police officers and other staff that serve residents.
FULL BUDGET DOCUMENT
And there is much, much more to see. Did one part of the budget strike you as particularly interesting? I encourage you to take a look at that department’s part of the budget. Each department has a great 2-4 page summary that lists accomplishments for this year, plans for next year and significant changes to their budget in the coming year.
As always, feel free to ask me questions; if I don’t know the answer, I can help you find it. And please remember there are public hearings on 10.12.21 and 11.10.21!
DEPARTMENT PRESENTATIONS
The Finance Committee held two meetings to hear about the budgets of all the city departments. If you’re interested in hearing more about an individual department and do not want to read the document, you can watch these You Tube videos.
The 10/05/21 meeting covered the following departments, in this order: Budget Document Logistics, Mayor’s Introduction, Building Inspection, Planning & Zoning, Economic Development, Senior Center, Library, Parks & Recreation, Information Technology, Finance.
The 10/06/21 meeting covered the following departments, in this order: FACTv, Clerk, Human Resources, Legal, Assessing, EMS, Fire, Police, Public Works (including Refuse & Recycling, Water Utility, Sewer and Stormwater), Administration.