Barely 48 hours after Mayor Rocky Anderson presented Salt Lake City's first biennial budget to an applauding audience, City Council members tasted a bitter piece.
Anderson's proposed 2002 budget has a $2.8 million general-fund deficit — and that money won't be recouped until 2003, when the city receives about $2.3 million in Olympic sales-tax revenues and repayments from the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.
Problem is, the Utah Constitution prohibits deficits and requires cities to balance their budgets every year.
"I find it disconcerting that in his 30-minute speech Tuesday night, the mayor didn't mention that the budget isn't balanced," said Councilman Dave Buhler. "Using such a significant amount of one-time revenue that will never happen again" is risky. "We're setting ourselves up for significant cuts, a tax increase or both."
Council staffers uncovered the imbalance soon after Anderson's presentation, Buhler said, "and the administration confirmed it." Now the staff will work on how the budget can be balanced this year without waiting for 2003; how to earmark one-time money for one-time projects only; and whether next year's revenue projections are realistic.
"I'm assuming the staff is going to come back and say, 'Yeah, they look reasonable,' but it's kind of like 'trust but verify,' " said Buhler.
Council Chairman Roger Thompson joked that he might have to represent the council by going to jail for the unconstitutional shortfall.
"At some point we've got to face the music," he said.
The deficit affects the city's capital improvement projects (CIP) fund — but the mayor, in a kind of "just this once" maneuver, planned for the Olympic-related funds to be paid back into that category.
Councilman Tom Rogan expressed disgust that the city's roads, water treatment plants and parks would, to his mind, suffer another year of neglect. The 2002 Games are just the latest thing to turn city officials' heads, he said.
"Every year we're going to have something new and glamorous come along. This year it's the Olympics," he said. "Is that where our priorities should be? I thought this council and this mayor were committed to addressing the deferred infrastructure needs of this city."
The city will have trouble affording the mayor's $2.3 million proposal for open space on the Main Library block, added Rogan. "This doesn't fall under my definition of deferred infrastructure needs," he said. "We're in deep deficits . . . and we're going to have some serious adjustments to do." Perhaps in some later year "if we have money left over we can come back and do this nice project" — a park just east of the new $90 million library.
The mayor wasn't at the council's Thursday meeting — he was attending the American Civil Liberties Union dinner — but deputy mayor Rocky Fluhart told the members that the administration is hopeful about working out the differences. "We're certainly interested in having a dialogue with you about how to meet the deferred infrastructure needs," he said.
A look at Anderson's biennial budget for fiscal 2002, which starts July 1, and fiscal 2003 shows an especially costly Olympic year, with total expenditures at $524.5 million. That's followed by a more conservative 2003, at $508.7 million.
The council will go on discussing the budget for the next five to seven weeks. "We're in for a very interesting time here," Buhler said. A public hearing is scheduled for 6 p.m. May 15.
E-MAIL: durbani@desnews.com