PDS’ budget for Fiscal Year 2016 continues a number of trends related to both revenues and expenditures for the organization. Those trends were highlighted for PDS Council members last month during the discussion that led to them approving it.
One elected representative from each of Kenton County’s 20 local governments makes up the PDS Council. These officials serve in a role defined by statute to “provide more effective representation of the various governmental units” participating in the organization’s operations. Among the group’s responsibilities is the review and approval of an annual budget and the tax rate that funds a majority of it.
According to Dennis Gordon, FAICP, PDS’ executive director, the organization’s new fiscal year budget “continues a trend the PDS Management Board initiated in FY08 and accelerated in FY10.”
“Because a good deal of the services PDS provides is driven by the economy, our budget reflects to some extent the ups and downs of the regional economy,” asserted Gordon. “Our Fiscal Year 2008 budget for example was our largest as the Great Recession took hold of everything. All budgets since then—including Fiscal Year 2016’s—have been varying numbers smaller than 2008’s”
Like most of those, FY16’s budget is being funded primarily through a “compensating tax rate” or less according to Gordon. A compensating rate is the rate that produces the same revenue as was produced by the previous year’s tax rate. The bottom line of a compensating rate budget is theoretically the same as the previous year’s assuming no other source(s) of revenue.
Among the many trends Gordon illustrated for the elected officials was an overall decrease in the budget’s bottom line.
“This new fiscal year budget is only a little larger than our Fiscal Year 2005 budget,” said Gordon. “This represents a meager ten percent budget increase over the past ten years—or put another way—an average annual increase of just one percent.”