City left with surplus in fiscal ‘09

Charlottesville still had a surplus at the end of the last fiscal year, despite that the economy is forcing many localities to deal with growing budgetary holes and fewer ways to plug them.

“The good news is that we have money to put into capital projects,” said Aubrey V. Watts Jr., Charlottesville’s director of economic development. “It was a surplus, not a deficit.”

The city staff is recommending that roughly $1.7 million in leftover funds be allocated to Charlottesville’s Capital Improvement Program, which contains its most expensive projects. But that balance would be after nearly $3.6 million is thrown back into various departments’ budgets and other funds.

According to city figures, fiscal 2009 revenues exceeded budget by $254,506, and department expenditures were down by more than $5 million.

“Our departments did a good job of tightening their belts this year,” Mayor Dave Norris said.

Officials said it is common that city departments will not spend all their funding in any given budget. The city had an excess of about $2.4 million in fiscal 2008, $7 million in fiscal 2007 and $7.8 million in fiscal 2006.

If the City Council — which will go over the appropriations on Monday — approves the staff’s recommendations, more than $1 million would be carried over to departments’ fiscal 2010 budgets. Several divisions of the city — including the City Attorney’s office, Economic Development, Neighbor-hood Development Services, the Charlottesville Circuit Court and the Sister Cities Commission — did not spend all the funding allocated to them during the last fiscal year.

Revenues in fiscal 2009, which ended June 30, exceeded budget by $254,506 and were almost entirely the result of a sharp jump in business and professional license tax revenues. That particular tax saw close to a $1.5 million surplus from the $5.8 million that was projected in the fiscal 2009 budget.

City officials said that was largely a result of auditing one new business that brought in a large chunk of new tax revenue, and had it not happened, they would have seen a deficit of around $1 million.

“This just happened to be a very large financial company,” said Bernard Wray, the city’s finance director.

Though the business audits take place every year, the city saw $1.2 million in revenue for the past budget.

“We got lucky this time,” Wray said. Councilor Satyendra Huja agreed about the unexpected surge from the one source.

“This was just a one-time thing,” he said. “You can’t count on that.”

Of the locality’s major money makers, the city ended up garnering $73,446 more in real estate taxes than the roughly $50.4 million that was budgeted. The same was true for personal property taxes, which exceeded its budget of $6.7 million by $70,537.

“That’s actually remarkably close,” Norris said.

Sales, meals and lodging taxes were all down by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lodging taxes saw a decline of $408,157, and sales tax revenues were down by $911,442. Meal taxes were also down, by $502,428.

Officials are anticipating that city revenues will be down by about $2 million the current fiscal year, which started July 1.