By Adam Gaub | Casa Grande Dispatch
Dealing with bringing several new buildings and facilities online in the next fiscal year, the city of Maricopa is expecting to dip into its reserve funds to help balance the budget.
Among the big projects are the new City Hall and police headquarters, projected for a mid-August opening, and the multigenerational center, set to open next March.
At the start of last week’s city budget, finance and operations subcommittee meeting, city officials were projecting a $750,000 deficit for the 2013- 14 fiscal year, which begins July 1. After hours of reviewng the budget, department by department, the subcommittee — which includes Mayor Christian Price and Councilmen Bridger Kimball and Leon Potter — managed to find more than $300,000 to trim from a budget that city leaders and council members already agreed was extremely lean.
Finance Director Tom Duensing said planning to spend slightly into the red wouldn’t badly hurt the city, considering it practically never spends all the money allotted in its budget. Duensing praised past councils for maintaining a higher- than-usual reserve fund, which currently holds more than $20 million, or nearly two-thirds of the city’s yearly operating budget.
