Florence Town Manager reflects on first year and year ahead
by Mark Cowling | Florence Reminder & Blade Tribune
Town Manager Brent Billingsley reflected on the past year and his plans for the new year.
When you came to town, a year ago this week, the town budget was spending more than $1 million above revenues. You got the budget to balance. What was key to accomplishing that, and will the town be able to keep it up in the new year?
It really comes down to having an excellent staff and having a very supportive (town) council. I think everyone was very aware of the deficit, as well as the challenges that were forthcoming this year, regarding the expenditure limitation election and the home rule election. That became a very clear priority that was assigned to me by council.
We kind of invented a new tool, a new way of doing things, called the budget target. We weren’t sure if we could fully eliminate the deficit that we were running, but by goodness we were committed to try and make that happen. We gave three different budget target presentations, and thankfully, (by) the final presentation we were able to balance that budget at the end of the year. Even though it was budgeted in the red we were able to finish the year in the black. Even more proudly, we just presented our CAFR (Certified Annual Financial Report) at our last council meeting, which is our annual audit of the city, and it once again confirmed that we finished the last fiscal year in the black. And as you know, we have approved for this fiscal year, which ends in June, another town budget that does not dip into savings.
