Let’s assume that both the City Manager and Accounting Clerk both spend two hours each day of every week that they show up to the office for the entire year on nothing but Water Fund business. This is an unrealistic estimate but I will be generous to make sure that all those daily meetings with the Public Works Director are accounted for.
Based on the salaries of these two positions, the City Manager should be reimbursed approximately $33,000 and the Accounting Clerk $22,000 for their respective time in their administrative support roles of the Water Fund. That leaves about $144,000 this budget year for your toner, paper, share of City Hall electricity, Water Fund cost share for a new printer every 3-4 years etc. Please do some better research to show how your narrative describing overhead allocation aligns with the dollars being transferred out of the Water Fund for the support services being described.
Remember Mr John Kunkle, the retired City Manager the Council hired as an interim prior to Ms Aman? For almost a year Mr Kunkle led the City which of course included providing his administrative support to the Water Fund doing all those tasks that the author has identified. At the end of his service with the City, Mr Kunkle estimated that he spent approximately 10-15% of his time in this activity. So just 3 years ago based on the salary Mr Kunkle was receiving, the Water Fund would have been reimbursing the City Manager $8,400 – $12,600 for these services.
Remember when Mr Kunkle told the City Council that he wouldn’t be making the transfer of $113,675 from the Water Fund to the City Hall Expansion Fund that the Budget Committee recommended and Council wanted to make because there was no justification for it?
With the use of money from the Water Fund coming under greater scrutiny, more creative explanations seem to have been found to keep the money flowing into the General Fund. After all, those debt payments starting next year on the loan for the new City Hall have to be paid and the banks do not care which City Fund the money comes from.
Randy Kugler
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