The city of Blytheville's 2014 budget process continues Monday night as the Finance and Purchasing Committee plans to meet at 5 p.m. in the Municipal Courtroom.
The Finance Committee is expected to finalize revenue numbers as well as look at budgets for Blytheville Waterworks, Wastewater and Parks and Recreation, which are all self-funded, separate from the General Fund. The board is also expected to look at large items missing, understated, or overstated from budget and establish goal numbers for the rest of the budget process.
"We need to leave Monday's meeting with a pretty firm grasp of where we are going with the rest of the budget," Councilman Tommy Abbott, chairman of the Finance Committee, wrote in an email to fellow Council members Friday, also asking that they plan for time in their January committee meetings to go over the different annual budgets. "It would be great if we could approve our budget in our regular Council meeting on Jan. 16th!"
Last Monday, the Finance Committee worked diligently on the revenue side, lowering original projections by about $1.5 million when comparing those figures with annualized actual 2013 numbers and 2012 data.
Projected income is now $14,813,530 instead of the original, $16,369,456.
The original proposed budget includes $15,483,385.62 in expenditures.
The City Council must pass a 2014 budget by Feb. 1.