Española city officials are trying to make the second time the charm for the city’s budget, which was approved by the City Council again Oct. 27 four months after initially approving it.
Councilors approved what they believed was the final city budget in July. Since then, city officials discovered former finance director Andrew Perkins submitted an entirely different version to the state Department of Finance Administration, which has final approval of all the state’s municipal budgets, Acting City Manager Veronica Albin said.
“There were some major discrepancies in some departments, minor ones in others and all of these adjustments were made after the governing body approved (the budget),” Albin said.
Added to that, Perkins based the budget on numbers he apparently made up, Albin said. A quarterly report intended to establish the city’s cash balances left over from the previous fiscal year showed numbers that Albin said “didn’t make sense.” Despite promises to revise the report before submitting it to the state, Perkins never did so, meaning the city submitted a final budget without knowing how much money they actually had.
Perkins was fired in September and has refused to comment since then.
Exactly how much money Perkins’ changes represented would be difficult to quantify because they were spread in small amounts over every department and fund in the budget, Albin said.
As it stands now, the city’s general fund, which covers expenses for most city departments, now has around $10.3 million in revenue and $10.4 million in expenditures, with cash balances plugging the difference. The first Council-approved version had around the same amount of revenue, but about $400,000 more in expenditures. In that version, cash balances plugged the difference. They still do, but in a much smaller amount.
“The major issue that we had before was we didn’t have our real cash balances,” Albin said of the differences between the two budgets. “We have those pieces in place now.”
With those changes, most city departments saw thousands of dollars less in their actual budget than in the preliminary budget approved by the Council in May, which Albin said she used as her starting point. Several of these reflected changes where items like office supplies and gas for city vehicles were paid for, rather than deep cuts, Albin said.
All department line items for office supplies, gas and diesel fuel, insurance premiums and telephone and utility costs will be paid for out of citywide funds, rather than by individual departments, which accounts for more than $100,000 in cuts for most departments, according to budget documents.
Albin said all differences between the preliminary budget and the current version are what she called “temporary cuts,” meaning they will be re-evaluated in January, halfway through the fiscal year.
However, Liz Baca, one of the city’s part-time administrative assistants said she is being laid off later this month, and she was told it was because of her department’s budget concerns.
Baca is paid out of the Human Resources department’s budget, but also works in the Finance department and at the city’s front desk. The Human Resources Department’s final budget is only $914 lower than what was listed in the preliminary budget, and the department’s funds for salaries still include Baca’s salary, according to city documents.
Both Brito and Albin are on vacation until Thursday (11/12), and Albin could not be reached on her city-issued cell phone.
Though the Council has approved the budget, the state has yet to do so, City Finance Specialist Rodrigo Ballon said. In fact, he is not sure if it has been submitted to the state yet, which Albin told the Council would happen at the end of October.
As of Nov. 5, the state had not received the city’s budget, and Department spokeswoman Gillespie declined comment Tuesday because she was preparing the state’s budget. The analyst assigned to Española, Brenda Suazo-Giles, referred all questions to Gillespie.
Councilors said they might have asked for changes if the situation had been normal, but their chief concern was getting the budget finished.
“There’s a lot of information in here that doesn’t meet my needs, but we do need to get a budget together and start operating properly,” District 1 Councilor Danielle Duran said, but declined to comment on what specifically she would change.
Mayor Pro Tem Alice Lucero said she would have liked more time to personally review the budget, but understood the need to approve it as soon as possible.
Until the Council approved the budget, the city had been operating using the most frugal version it had, which was the version approved in July.
City department heads said they were by and large satisfied with the budget, but some said they would have requests come the mid-year review.
“I don’t think I’ll be hurting or anything like that,” Planning Director Russell Naranjo said. “But there are a few things I’m hoping we find the money for in January.”
City Clerk Heather Velasquez also said she did not receive any crippling cuts, but that it would be nice to have a little more money in her budget.
The only department to see an increase from the preliminary budget is the city manager’s department, of which Albin is the department head. This was because Albin moved several citywide expenses, such as the design contract for a proposed new library, to fall under her department’s spending. Albin is also currently in charge of the Finance Department, which is leaner than in the preliminary budget.