Minutes 03/20/2007 - Laserfiche WebLink

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March 20. 2007 At a Called Meeting of the City Council on Tuesday, March 20, 2007, there were present: Mayor James W. Holley III, Vice Mayor Marlene W. Randall, Stephen E. Heretick, Ray A. Smith, Sr., Douglas L. Smith, City Manager James B. Oliver, Jr., City Attorney G. Timothy Oksman. 07 - 128 - The following call for the meeting was read: "Please attend a Called Meeting of the City Council to be held in the City Council Chamber, 801 Crawford Street, 5:00 p.m., Tuesday, March 21, 2006 for the purpose of a Public Work Session. In addition, you may consider a motion to go into a Closed Meeting. By order of the Mayor." 07 - 129 - The following item was discussed in Public Work Session: 1. Presentation of Proposed Annual Operating Budget/Capital Improvement Plan by James B. Oliver, Jr., City Manager Mayor, Vice-Mayor and Council Members, I am very pleased to submit the City Manager's recommended 2007-2008 Fiscal Year Operating Budget of $231 million and Capital Improvement Program (CIP) Budget of $46.6 million for your consideration. AliQninQ BudQets with City Council's Vision This is my third and final proposed budget submission. The FY08 proposed budgets continue this effort, focusing on the revalidated Vision Statement crafted by City Council in October last year and signed on November 28, 2006. While the Vision Statement contains a number of ambitious declarations in which the City Council envisions what they believe the City of Portsmouth will look like in 2025, the budget enables the practical work tasks. Thus, the development of the proposed operating and capital budgets is the opportunity for the City Manager to balance the difficult choices of matching revenues with expenses. Over the last three years, we have made significant progress in aligning the budgets with Council's Vision Statements. The Capital Improvement Budget establishes the physical context for our long-term future. Here there has been much dialogue with the City Council and the public in setting criteria and building priorities for the next 10 years. For instance, Council has approved the new Portsmouth Library at Churchland and a new Circuit Courthouse in downtown. The Library is historic in the sense that is the first library in our 255-year history to have been built as a library from the ground up. Other city library facilities have been conversions of buildings used for other purposes. The Courthouse is the result of hard work to modernize and relocate the city's judicial system through a phased approach. BudQet HiQhliQhts As noted above, this budget is an effort to continue to align the City's spending, investing and saving with the City Council Vision, and to fulfill a number of long-term commitments made by the Council in previous budgets. Specifically, this budget includes: