The Green River City Council passed a $12 million budget at Tuesday’s meeting, with overall net changes of about $300,000.
City of Green River Financial Director Chris Meats said they projected a $1.8 million decrease in city revenues, and balanced that through a series of cuts and reserve monies. This is a pretty level change in comparison to last year’s budget, said Meats.
“While the revenues took a decrease this year, the City of Green River’s expenditures are fairly level,” said Meats. “The revenues went down more than the expenditures, so then we had to take money out of savings to balance our budget out.”
The city balanced the decrease in revenues with roughly $3,000 in changes and reductions to the budget itself. Between $1.5 to $1.6 million was withdrawn from the city’s reserve funds. This works out to be a 35 % withdrawal from the city’s savings account, essentially.
Meats said this is a withdrawal percentage that should only be taken out very rarely and in dire need. Because this percentage is being taken out this year, the same amount cannot be taken out next year. There will be more cuts of services in the future.
“You can’t spend more money than you have,” said Meats. “We’re hoping that the economy is turning and going a little bit, but we won’t know and that’s why we used a lot of our reserves this year.”
“The economy is not going to boom, but we’re hoping it’s going to go better,” said Meats.
