By Larry Lannan
The local government budgeting process is normally a fairly routine affair. In Fishers this year, the town council is about to undergo a budget process that will be anything but routine.
Fishers will become a city on Jan. 1, 2015. The city will have an annual budget in place at that time.
The new city will be operating under a 2015 spending plan passed by the Fishers Town Council. This is one of the quirks of transitioning from a town to a city.
The Fishers Town Council will begin discussions on the 2015 budget in late June or early July, according to Town Manager Scott Fadness.
“There will be some changes in regard to the budget in anticipation of the transition (to a city), but they have yet to been hammered out,” Fadness says. He also says the basic process of budgeting “will stay the same.”
One of the major decisions made at budget time deals with how much money the municipal staff will be paid. Fishers currently has no mayor. The town council will be setting the salary level for the new mayor that takes office in 2015.
The town council will also be setting the salary levels of the mayor’s staff and the remainder of the town employees. Rank and file workers for Fishers will not be impacted much by the move from a town to a city, but what about the top managers?
The new mayor will have a city organization created by the Fishers Town Council in its 2014 budget process. The pay for his staff and department heads, including the number of people on his staff in 2015, will be decided by the town council this year.
Scott Fadness, as the Republican nominee for Mayor of Fishers, is the clear favorite to assume that office on January 1, 2015. Keep in mind that Fadness is an employee of the town council the remainder of this year as the town manager and has no vote on the 2015 Fishers City budget.
Yes, budgets can be boring and the numbers can glaze the eyes of the most experienced accountant. But spending priorities say a lot about what our elected officials think about government and where tax money should and should not be spent.
Budgets are not easy but they are important. As citizens of Fishers, I urge you to follow the budget process this year in Fishers.
