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From the left, Elgin City Councilman Fred Guevara speaks while Mayor JJ Francais listens Tuesday at Elgin City Hall. The council unanimously approved the city’s $3.52 million budget for fiscal year 2023, which begins July 1. Eric Swanson/Staff photo
ELGIN – Elgin City Council unanimously approved on Tuesday a $3.52 million budget proposal for the coming fiscal year.
The spending plan anticipates that the city will generate about $3.52 million in revenue and spend approximately $4.04 million in fiscal year 2023, leaving a shortfall of about $517,000. The city will need to tap reserve funds to make up the shortfall.
Oklahoma law requires cities to rely on sales tax dollars as their main source of revenue, so officials work with the money that they have available when building their budget, said Mayor JJ Francais.
“It’s not a perfect budget, but it is a budget that utilizes every piece of revenue we can,” he said.
Councilman Sean Bateman said the budget for FY 2023 spends more money in some areas than is coming in, but the city has enough money in reserves to offset the shortfall.
“So the city is certainly not spending more than it has access to, but in my perception, the rate of spending has increased for very many valid reasons,” he said. “We have to fix the streets. We have to do something with the animal control center. We have to take care of the community center. The events we’re doing in the city are all very valid and are part of the growth that all contributes to the sales tax.”
But Bateman said if the city keeps spending at its current level, officials may have to make some dramatic cuts in the next couple of years.
“None of us can predict where the economy will be in one, two, three years, but I’d just be a little bit concerned about it,” he said. “If this was my family budget, I’d start to be thinking about making some reductions in order to stay on track.”
The city’s new fiscal year begins July 1.