City chops budget

The final reading of this year’s budget for the City of Sundance came after department heads were forced to cut around $400,000 from the total. Since the budget was first presented in April, major changes have taken place in regards to state revenue, said Clerk Treasurer Kathy Lenz.

“The first reading went fairly well for us, but then COVID-19 hit and the oil prices dipped, so we left on the second reading the numbers the same until we got the new CREG report,” Lenz told the council. “We started at about $400,000 down.”

Lenz met with Police Chief Marty Noonan and Public Works Director Mac Erickson the night before the council meeting on Tuesday with the aim of cutting as much as possible from the budget to match the new figures.

“We were able to get the dollar amount to fit,” she said, presenting a budget that had been balanced and was now $2565 in the positive.

However, Lenz cautioned that there is a chance this success could be short-lived.

“In saying that, we’ll have to really monitor this going forward – every month, to see just what our revenue comes in at. I’m not saying that we won’t have to come back in later and take another stab at it and do a budget amendment,” she said.

Mayor Paul Brooks explained that the Census Revenue Estimating Group (CREG) estimates the revenue for the state, of which the cities receive a portion.

“The state is down about $1.8 billion, so it is a bad time to be in Wyoming. Coal is not coming back, the refineries are closing and unemployment is going up. There are just not a lot of bright spots out there right now,” he said.

“We have some projects in the pipeline, hopefully we will weather them. Hopefully the governor can find it in his heart to save some of the COVID-19 money and pump it into local government, because COVID-19 is somewhat responsible for the crash in the local economy. And hopefully it’s not as dire as it appears.”

However, said Brooks, the work done by the city in recent years may be helpful in getting through the financial crunch.

“Our infrastructure is in a fairly good spot, we’ve got some money in the pipeline to do some projects, which keeps the local economy living,” he said.

Brooks expressed hope that the financial outlook will be a v-shaped pattern rather than a u-shaped pattern, but added that it would take “a crystal ball bigger than I have” to determine the likelihood of that happening.

Hearing no comment from the public, the council passed a motion to approve the budget.