City Commission Discuss Getting Loan And Ways To Meet Budget

The Commissioners looked at several scenarios on this t.v. screen to determine a plan of action. 

L-R Mayor Pat Sims, Commissioners Ben Maples and Justin Willis, City Manager Arbie Taylor

The Dumas City Commission met Monday night to discuss authorizing application of a loan from Happy State Bank.  The Commissioners did approve Resolution No. 15-09 to get a loan but only after two hours of discussing how the city got in this position of needing a loan and how to make sure this doesn't happen again.

City Manager Arbie Taylor said, "The reason this is on the table is our cash in bank debt service coming up.  Because mother nature has blessed us with all the wonderful rain that we have gotten it has hindered our revenues for our water revenues which is a big chunk of what we relied on."

The rains has caused the city to pump less and therefore revenues are down.  The short term loan will help the city to meet their budget.  Mayor Pat Sims asked how long before this note would be paid.  Dottie Crockett, Finance Director, said, "This loan would be paid back in the next six to nine months."

Steve Bodnar asked, "What can we do to avoid this next year."  City Manager Arbie Taylor, replied, "What we have planned which is what we'll discuss in our work session, but to avoid this next year we need to be a lot more conservative with our budget projections as far as what we project for revenues.  Which we have done."

The Commission discussed at length ways to make revenues that involves raising the citizens city bill.  If they do what was discussed at this meeting both the gas and water base that is charged each month would be raised.  The Commission also looked at what other cities charge for these same services.  They noted that Amarillo charge two and a half more for the same services.  It was also noted that other surrounding cities charge more than the City of Dumas.

Commissioner David Bonner and Steve Bodnar both was concerned on how they ended in a position to have to get a loan when throughout the year they were never alerted to a shortage of money.  Dottie Crockett, Finance Director assured them that they would get a verbal report each month from now on.

City Manager Arbie Taylor talked about the department heads are very good at staying under budget but it's lack of revenues that is the problem.  Taylor stated, "We can't build a rainy day fund but we can build surplus so that we can pay as we go for things that in the past, and in the recent past we have said, "well we can finance this for three years and get by".  "Why?"  "We need to be building surplus to have revenue and to have cash in the bank so that during those times of the year when our revenue income is slowing down that we are not in a situation that we are today."  "That's what you build reserves for, that's why you have reserves for to cushion you through out the year.  There is always going to be peaks and valleys.  I'm trying to cut the peaks off and fill in the valleys."

The Commission will be discussing rate increases at future meetings to help build revenues.