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City budget moves forward

(8/10) At its August 8 meeting, Taneytown City Council introduced budget amendments to the fiscal year 2022-23 budget.

The majority of changes to the budget come from projects and expenses pushed into the next year, according to City Manager James Wieprecht.

In FY-22 the city received more state income tax revenue than projected. "Our state income revenue has been growing faster than we expected," he said, noting a $300,000 revenue increase.

In addition, the city has received updated real property tax information with numbers that are $75,000 higher than the estimates we had when we did the budget," he said. This unexpected revenue increase however is offset by the $52,000 cost of purchasing the four-acre lot to protect the Antrim Boulevard Corridor.

Many of the changes in the FY-22 & FY-23 budgets are related to pushing projects into next year, thereby accounting for their cost in the next budget as apposed to the current budget. For example, the city did not spend money as expected on police and public works vehicles, "Because they weren’t delivered as expected, so were still waiting on those and their costs will be included in the FY-23 budget," Wieprecht said.

The utility fund will also see an increase due to projects that were to have been done this year being pushed into next year. Again, once the city begins work on those projects, their expenses will be captured in the FY-23 accounting.

Wieprecht told the council that the water tank and standpipe renovations that were originally supposed to be done as a capital project in FY-22 are no longer a capital project budget line item since the city has entered a long-term maintenance contract and now the cost of work on those items is spread over time and moved into maintenance contractual obligations line item. Due to these renovations, the FY-23 capital projects budget has been reduced by $200,000 while the long-term maintenance agreement line item in the FY-23 budget has been increased by $80,000.

In the sewer budget, construction for the dewatering project has been delayed. "We didn’t get as much done in FY-22 as we expected, so we're rolling that into FY-23," he said. The FY-23 budget line for these projects will then see complimentary cost increases as the projects are started up.

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