Cd'A budget up to $95.5M

COEUR d’ALENE — Planning for the unexpected can be trying for anyone. Your kid needs braces. Your car’s transmission goes belly-up. You don’t get the tax refund you expected.

You renovate an iconic ballpark from the ground up.

In a yearly ritual that squares the costs of past projects with the bills of today’s budget, the Coeur d’Alene City Council will vote tonight on a resolution that would reconcile the city’s annual budget, incorporating ongoing projects, bonus revenue and unanticipated costs, raising the 2018-2019 budget by just under $4.9 million.

The projects likely to be added vary from fire department storm repair to leases on loaders to the Memorial Park Grandstand reconstruction.

The new figure adjusts for more than just expenditures. Vonnie Jensen, city comptroller, will also demonstrate unexpected revenue like grants, money that is easier to calculate at the end of a budget year than the beginning.

“It’s really hard to budget for grants because you don’t know which grants you’re going to receive until you receive them,” Jensen said. “So we add them afterward or carry them over.”

“We can’t budget for money we get if we don’t know we’re going to get it,” Council member Dan Gookin said. “The law requires we balance our budget. You can actually do this as the money comes in, but we’ve found it makes it much easier to happen all at once at the end of the year.”

If approved as expected, the 2018-2019 budget will climb to $95,597,311.

Bigger items on the budget reconciliation list include the grandstand renovation, purchase of the East Sherman property from St. Vincent de Paul, and transfers from the Atlas Waterfront and street light fund. The projects — already voted on and approved over the course of the last 12 months — are nothing new to the City Council.

“I know it feels like deja vu all over again,” Gookin said. “It’s stuff [the council has] seen come through here before. So as they come through, we realize it’s just part of the process ... And this factors in money the city receives from outside revenue, like ignite cda. So all of that gets added in.”

“A majority of the added expenses are covered by added revenue, such as the $1.3 million for the grandstands,” Mayor Steve Widmyer added. “... Overall, the revenues taken in will closely track with expenses.”

Jensen said the new $4.9 million calculation more accurately reflects the reality of the city’s revenues and expenditures. But even then, the numbers won’t exactly match up.

“For example,” Jensen pointed out, “the [$607,400] for the loaders we use is actually just an accounting tool. The law requires we have to put the full value of the loaders in our budget. But we lease those loaders, so that’s an extra [approximately] $600,000 we have ... Really the majority of these [budget items] work like that. They’re carryovers from grants from last year. Next year, there will be carryovers from this year. That’s just how the process works.”