Belleville City Council approves $123.1 million budget

The Belleville City Council on Monday approved a $123.1 million budget scheduled to go into effect on May 1.

The budget is comprised of several funds that get revenue from various sources. For example, most of the property taxes collected in the city are used to support the police officer and firefighter pension funds and the library fund.

A Belleville resident with a $100,000 home can expect to pay an estimated $833 in city property taxes this year, an increase of $45, or 5.7 percent, from last year’s amount of about $788. The city previously said the estimated increase would go up $74 from $734 to $808 on a home worth $100,000 but Finance Director Jamie Maitret said Monday this estimate was incorrectly calculated.

The 2017-18 budget also includes a $28 million general fund that is used to run most of the city’s day-to-day operations. The general fund, which is the largest fund in the budget, gets most of its support from sales tax and income tax revenue. It includes a 2 percent pay raise for city employees.

Maitret told the council that the general fund approved Monday night is $62,000 lower than the current one.

The police and fire departments combined are scheduled to get about $16.5 million from the general fund. The police department, with a $9.9 million spending plan, takes up 35 percent of the general fund and the fire department uses $6.6 million, or about 24 percent.

The $123.1 million budget is down from the current budget, which is expected to end the fiscal year on April 30 at $127.1 million. The budget fluctuates each year based on the number of capital improvement projects.

Ward 3 Alderman Scott Tyler, who also serves as a city firefighter, told the council the property tax increase linked to pensions often gets highlighted. He said one of the reasons for the increase is that the pension funds for police officers and firefighters across the state were neglected for years.

Mayor Mark Eckert said Belleville has kept up its payments for the past 20 years but acknowledged that prior to that there were “many years that our city too, kicked the can down the road and underfunded the pensions.”

“Firefighters and police officers aren’t eligible for Social Security,” Tyler said. He noted that if he retired today, he would pay for his health care insurance and get less than $25,000 annually from the firefighters’ pension fund.

“So it’s not that we’re getting crazy, out-of-line pensions, it’s that these cities for 30, 40 years, way before our time put little or no money in these funds,” Tyler said.

Maitret told aldermen: “The pension actuaries tell us how much we have to contribute. If they’re not funded to at least the minimum requirements, we can be subject to legal and financial ramifications.”

The budget approved Monday night includes the following:

▪  $15.2 million for sewer work.

▪  $1 million in TIF 3 for City Hall renovations as part of the $20.6 million plan that included the new police headquarters that opened at 720 W. Main St. last year along with the City Hall improvements expected to be finished this summer.

▪  $271,000 in TIF 3 for six police vehicles.

Aldermen voted 15-0 to approve the budget with outgoing Ward 7 Alderman Trent Galetti abstaining from the vote. Galetti, who lost his re-election bid to Dennis Weygandt on April 4, said he didn’t think he should vote on a budget that covers a year that he will not be in office. Weygandt will take office May 1.

In other business

▪  Scott Ferguson, who unsuccessfully challenged Ward 3 Alderman Kent Randle in the April 4 election, was appointed to the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals.

▪  Eckert said the City Hall renovations will not be finished until July or August so the council approved a measure to keep meeting at Lindenwood University-Belleville until August.

This story was originally published April 17, 2017 at 8:11 PM with the headline "Belleville City Council approves $123.1 million budget."