Provo City Council enacts new budgeting policies

PROVO — Planning how the city spends taxpayer dollars took on a whole new look with 10 resolutions approved by the Provo City Council on Tuesday.

The new budgeting policies have the support of Mayor Lewis K. Billings, said Wayne Parker, the city's chief administrative officer.

Provo already has trimmed its budget nearly 2 percent, and another 2 percent in cuts is needed, Parker said. Revenues are down nearly $1 million from projections.

Some of the resolutions were made moot with a memo of support from the mayor's office, City Councilman Steve Turley said, but the council passed them all anyway.

Resolutions blunted by the mayor's memo included a stated opposition to layoffs. Turley previously had challenged the concept, saying it contradicted another of the proposed resolutions that called for the city to trim its budget in a targeted manner, rather than across the board.

Laying people off could do that, he said.

"We don't want to cut the budget with layoffs," Councilwoman Sherrie Hall Everett said.

The council rewrote one of the resolutions to include both the council and mayor working together in developing budget reports, rather than just requiring Billings to do that.

"The administration and council have to work together," said Dirk Anderson, the city's newly hired fiscal-policy officer.

Four of the resolutions refer to the current budget, while the rest concern future budgets. One of the actions requires the city to look at all budgets, including capital improvement and enterprise budgets, as well as the general fund, to make the cuts.

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