Transcript Staff Writer

Increases in motor fuel prices are the biggest unknown while crafting the fiscal year 2009 budget, Norman city councilmembers heard at their Tuesday study session.

About $400,000 additional funding is being requested for the increase in fuel costs to run the City's fleet.

General fund functions take up almost 48 percent of the fuel budget. The biggest part of that is police patrol, followed by street maintenance and fire suppression.

The sanitation department comes in second in usage in the fuel budget at 42 percent.

But the focus for this study session was the general fund, which takes up 37 percent of the budget at $66 million.

"General fund is the bread and butter fund," said City Manager Steve Lewis. "It's been a difficult time putting this budget together ... motor fuels are really skyrocketing."

He said also impacting the budget are "extraordinary" workers comp expenses and the impact of the council's action last year to reinstitute about 20 positions back into the budget that were cut in previous tight years.

The FY '09 budget is projected on a 4 percent increase in revenue. The City is currently running 6.5 percent ahead of last year's revenue.

"We'll still be growing, we'll just be growing more slowly than in previous years," said Anthony Francisco, finance director.

Lewis said Norman's low debt service puts it in a good position.

"But the national economic information has kind of troubled us," Lewis said. "We are getting a lot of conflicting information about where we're going."

The state economic situation has remained consistent, despite the national bad news.

But sales tax can be impacted by national and state economic downturns, which makes up the largest part of the general fund. Sales tax comprises 56 percent of the general fund revenues, with franchise taxes making up 10 percent and other taxes 3 percent. Other revenues include cost allocations from other departments of 6 percent and various charges like animal adoption fees and weed abatement fees.

Expenditures by department include police, 25 percent; public works, 22 percent; fire, 20 percent; finance, 9 percent; parks, 4 percent; administration and legislature, 5 percent; planning, 5 percent; legal, 2 percent; municipal court, 1 percent; human resources, 1 percent; and other, 5 percent.