The Sedona City Council met last week for the first in-depth discussion of the city’s budget for the Fiscal Year 2022-23.
The initial proposed budget sat around $110,424,500 but after the city council changed it for different projects and wages, the overall tentative budgeted expenditures came to $112,933,480 for FY23.
While the proposed budget is not set to be approved or denied until the tentative budget adoption on Tuesday, June 28, council members discussed the specifics of each department’s budget, the capital improvement budget and the overall budget for the city.
The City Manager’s Office covered six different departments with its own decision packages, including administration, communications, sustainability, arts and culture, short-term rental monitoring and housing.
“The [City Manager’s Office] budget is actually going down, largely because we are moving the contract with the Sedona Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau,” Director of Finance Cherie Wright said. “We are referring to it as the ‘sustainable tourism contract,’ so we are moving that to General Services. We felt like that was a better representation than having that under the city manager’s office.”
The only other department’s budget decreasing is human resources.
For the majority of other departments, the percent increase attributes to the department’s request for additional staff, such as the Sedona Police Department for another dispatcher, the Transit Department for a grant coordinator and expanded projects. But according to city staff, the increases are also due to increased service prices and inflation in the overall market.
As for capital improvements, city staff proposed a $62.2 million budget, a rise of $42.2 million from last year’s capital improvement budget or, in other words, a 213% increase.
In the proposal, Sedona In Motion, the city’s transportation improvement project, receives the most amount of this budget with Public Works coming in a close second.
For FY 2022, the approved budget came to $62.7 million but the estimated expenditure came to $9.4 million under that at $53.3 million. This year, will more than likely be the same, since in the last 10 years the city’s difference in budget and actual costs averaged out at about $8.7 million each year.
“When I go through and do all the numbers to make sure everything is reconciled, the numbers might be slightly different, but this should be a very good idea of what it would be for tentative,” Wright said.
The tentative budget adoption will be around June 28, with the final budget adoption during the first council meeting of August.
Budget Increases
Below are Sedona city departments’ proposed decision packages’ direct costs for this next fiscal year:
General Services increased 17% to $14,112,790*
Police Department increased 17% to $6,736,990
Transit increased 151% to $2,230,390
Parks and Recreation increased 3% to $922,050
Municipal Court increased 10% to $719,900
Public Works increased 12% to $6,754,580
Wastewater increased 12% to $3,525,530
Information Technology increased 19% $1,936,780
Financial Services increased 18% to $1,729,030
Community Development increased 1% to $1,962,320
Economic Development increased 147% to $822,590
City Attorney increased 4% to $802,910
City Council increased 8% to $76,170
City Clerk increased 19% to $352,050
Proposed decreases
City Manager’s Office decreased 35% to $3,011,300*
Human Resources decreased 3% to $335,560
*The marketing contract Sedona Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau, now called the sustainable tourism contract, moved from the City Manager’s Office budget to the General Services budget.
