Glasgow officials are experiencing the same budgetary concerns as many national and state leaders – how to meet increasing demands for local needs and services while operating on decreasing revenues during an economic recession.

The Glasgow City Council gave final approval to the annual fiscal budget for July 1, 2009, through June 30, 2010, at Monday night’s council meeting.

It is a budget that called for department heads to find ways to initially cut 15 percent from each of their individual budgets and left Mayor Darrell Pickett and Sheila Oliver, city clerk/administrator, still looking at a $2 million gap to fill between expenditures and revenue shortfall.

“There are no major purchases for any department with this budget,” Pickett said.

“Basically, the only increase in anybody’s budget was with the insurance and the retirement went up,” Oliver said. “Everything else, pretty much, we cut out. There’s no new vehicles. Like with a fire hose, if it’s not busted, don’t buy a new one.”

The city’s budget is divided into 14 different funds, the greatest of which is the General Fund. It is the largest revenue-producing fund and expenditures such as departmental salaries, operational expenses and capital outlay and projects come out of it.

The carryover balance in the General Fund from the 2008-09 budget was $4,953,516. Estimated revenue in the 2009-10 budget is $11,360,903 and estimated expense is $13,354,956 leaving a projected balance of $2,959,463, this a decrease in the carryover amount of approximately $2 million from the previous year, which was just under $5 million and down from more than $6 million in the 2007-08 budget.

The mayor, council members and city employees will not receive salary increases in the new budget due to the projected economic shortfalls in revenue, according to Pickett’s budget message.

“We didn’t give city employees any increase in pay. I hope that they understand the economic times we are in and the people in this community are losing their jobs and have no jobs,” he said.

The good news for city workers is health and dental insurance and retirement benefits were not cut and the city does not plan any employee layoffs.

“Many Kentucky cities have been forced to lay off employees and drop services,” the mayor noted. “Our goal for Glasgow is to continue operations as is.”

The percentage the city pays for retirement costs increased for non-hazardous employees from 13.50 to 16.16 percent and for hazardous duty employees from 29.50 to 32.97 percent. Health insurance increased by 6.5 percent and dental insurance by 3 percent, according to the mayor.

“We were fortunate as our general liability insurance and worker’s compensation stayed the same,” Pickett reported.

The other 13 funds include the Capital Project Fund —Trojan Trail, which was budgeted for more than $2 million dollars and funded by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet in the previous budget to widen and improve Trojan Trail. It was scheduled for completion before June 30 of this year and so will not be funded in the new budget.

The Glasgow Housing Loan Fund — Tartan Glen has met the original grant requirements for 18 projects and will be closed. The fund had a balance of $90,677 that will be transferred to the General Fund.