Memorandum

City of Lawrence

City Manager’s Office

DATE:	October 3, 2013
TO:	David L. Corliss, City Manager
FROM:	Casey Toomay, Budget Manager
CC:	Cynthia Wagner, Assistant City Manager Diane Stoddard, Assistant City Manager Jonathan Douglass, Assistant to the City Manager / City Clerk
RE:	Public Hearing to Amend the 2013 Budget

Please place the following item on the City Commission agenda for consideration at their October 8 meeting:

Conduct public hearing on the amendment to the 2013 Budget.  Adopt on first reading, Ordinance No. 8922, amending the 2013 City of Lawrence Operating and Capital Improvement Budget, if appropriate.

Background

As part of the 2014 budget process, the City Commission received a request for a loan from the Lawrence Community Shelter.  The loan would be repaid over time at a lower interest rate than the Shelter was currently receiving from their bank, reducing their expenses. 

In order to fund the $725,000 loan, staff recommends paying $425,000 from the City’s General Operating Fund and $300,000 from the Special Alcohol Fund.  While there is sufficient budget authority for this expenditure in the 2013 adopted general fund budget, there is not sufficient budget authority in the special alcohol fund budget.  Therefore, it is necessary to amend the 2013 budget. 

K.S.A. 79-2929a authorizes the governing body of a municipality to amend its adopted current budget in certain circumstances.  The statute requires any proposed increase in expenditures to be balanced by previously unbudgeted increases in revenue other than ad valorem property taxes.  In the present situation the actual beginning balance of the Special Alcohol Fund exceeded the estimated beginning balance.  Therefore, a budget amendment is necessary and appropriate to authorize the Governing Body to use the excess balance.

Public Hearing for Proposed 2014 Budget

The statute allows the budget to be amended during the year in which such budget is in effect subject to the same publication, notice and public hearing requirements as required by K.S.A. 79-2929, and amendments thereto, for the adoption of the original budget. 

Per action taken at the September 17, 2013 City Commission meeting, notice of a public hearing to be conducted on October 8, 2013 was published on September 27, 2013 in the Lawrence Journal World. The purpose of the hearing is to answer and hear questions of taxpayers relating to the amendment of the 2013 budget.

Action Item

Conduct public hearing on the amendment to the 2013 Budget.  Adopt on first reading, Ordinance No. 8922, amending the 2013 City of Lawrence Operating and Capital Improvement Budget, if appropriate.