Councilman: unbalanced budget not acceptable

Grand Coulee’s city council passed its budget reluctantly last week, with one council member warning that the city would need to find another $50,000 by year’s end or layoffs would be necessary.

“I wanted to have a balanced budget that we could vote on,” said Councilmember Tom Poplawski at the council’s meeting Dec. 20. “But after all the discussions and all of the meetings, looking at numbers and analysis of it all, we can’t get there unless we were to lay people off. That’s the bottom line. We’ve chosen not to do that.”

The city’s 2023 budget as passed appropriates over $4.1 million across spending and reserve categories.

The city clerk/treasurer prepared a spreadsheet that shows a beginning balance of $650,000 in the “Current Expense” fund, basically a master fund through which expenses are paid. The budget expects $1,777,035 to come in from all revenue sources and to pay out $20,135 more than that, drawing down that reserve.

“If we cannot establish a budget that is balanced going into 2024, then we will have to lay people off,” Poplawski said. “There will be no choice because the city is obligated by law to have a balanced budget. And so what we’re saying in this budget is that we’re willing to accept the deficit in our budget by funding it out of our beginning fund balance. That is not the way to run the city.”

The council passed the budget unanimously.