FILLMORE : City to Spend $40,000 Despite Fund Deficit

The Fillmore City Council projected a budget deficit of $105,000 and then authorized about $40,000 in new expenditures this week.

The city’s reserves will be used to cover the new expenses, officials said.

The city will buy a new emergency vehicle for the volunteer Fire Department and repair the filtering system for one of the two municipal water wells. The council also authorized foot patrols by sheriff’s deputies to fight gangs, but told the department to work within its current budget.

Although the potential deficit represents less than 1% of the city’s total budget, reserve funds probably will not cover it, City Manager Roy Payne said. “I don’t see this deficit going away,” he said.

When it was adopted last June, Fillmore’s 1990-91 budget of nearly $17 million was expected by staff to be the city’s first balanced budget in five years.

Payne said the deficit was due to a shortfall in revenue. City employees have stayed within the limits set last year, Payne told the council, despite cuts in office supplies and the elimination of all travel expenses. Payne blamed a general downturn in the national economy and a lack of new development in Fillmore for a decrease in income.

The new emergency vehicle will cost the city less than $25,000, Fire Chief Pat Askren said. To save time, the council agreed to allow staff to buy the vehicle from a local dealer rather than putting it out for bid.

The breakdown of a filtration system that removes iron and manganese from one of Fillmore’s wells will cost the city between $10,000 and $20,000, said John Kozar, public works superintendent. He told the council that repairs would take about three weeks. Meanwhile, the city is down to one functioning well, Kozar said, and citizens have been asked to conserve.

The well’s filter failed Jan. 31. The State Department of Health would permit use of the well without the filter in case of emergency, “but those minerals do cloud the water, and we’d like to avoid that,” Kozar said.