Adam Yoder. PHOTO PROVIDED

City Councilman Adam Yoder believes there might be better ways to budget moving forward.

During the second reading of Mayor Derek Slaughter’s proposed $28.3 million budget for 2022, Yoder showed models that remove estimated beginning balance, or $1.9 million; $960,000 of federal American Rescue Plan money and estimated ending balance of $517,137.

“What we have done for years is we have used the remaining balance from conservative budgeting to balance our budget,” Yoder said.

Council has said for a number of years and last week that “it is not a good approach,” he said. “In good fiscal practice, the city wants its revenues and expenditures to be directly in line,” he said.

“It wants the ending balance to put away, and not rely on that for balancing the budget,” he added.

The “organic” revenue then is adjusted to a negative $1.9 million.

“It does not line up with expenditures the city is incurring year after year,” he said. “That is what the city’s true blue deficit is.”

Assuming the city comes in on budget for 2022, and ends up with a ending balance of zero, what that means going into 2023 with organic revenue growth of 1% and 3.8% expenditures is that the city ends up with a $1.2 million shortfall.

“We likely will come in under that,” Yoder said. But nonetheless, zero-based budgeting results in continuous property tax increases.

He also showed model budgets for 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 with more positive outlooks. A City of Lancaster model was presented showing police and fire budgets, and it showed a decrease in general fund expenditures of $2 million.

“Full transparency there may be things we find out we could not do,” Yoder said.

Council President Randall J. Allison said there was nothing wrong with aiming high.

“We don’t want to paint a too dire or rosy of a picture,” Allison said.

The next council meeting will be held by remote at 7 p.m. Thursday.