Nevada budget is about people

When you think about city budgets, the first thing that usually comes to mind is page after page of numbers showing where the city will spend its money.

And that does describe the physical aspect of a budget, however, behind those pages of numbers are people. The citizens who pay the taxes and fees that the city uses to provide services to those same taxpayers, the mother and her young child who use the playground at Spring Street Park, the 6-year-old girl learning to swim at Walton Pool or the 65-year-old retiree fishing from the floating dock at Radio Springs Lake.

Those numbers also represent the dozens of city employees who toil to provide those services. The police officer and fireman who protects your life and property, the receptionist who answers your call at city hall, the accountant who worked on putting those pages of numbers together, the city laborer who cleaned the pile of leaves out of the gutter so the street does not flood and the 18-year-old lifeguard at Walton Pool earning money to help pay for college.

Those pages of numbers also reflect the hours of work the various city department heads and the city manager have spent going over the numbers and trying to make meaningful projections of the city's taxes, as well as the hours the members of the Nevada City Council have spent in work sessions, going over those pages of numbers with the city department heads and city manager, and then making hard choices about how much money the city has and how to spend it to serve the needs of the community.

This year, the 2011 city budget will show the widespread changes that will be taking place in the city government over the next months.

In the coming months, there will be numerous changes in how the city government functions, with the goal of improving the city's customer service, City Manager JD Kehrman said Wednesday afternoon.

"It is not just a spending plan. It's a policy document," he said.

Kehrman said that this budget is largely a performance based budget, which simply stated comes down to "what is the mission we're tying to fulfill and what resources do we have at our disposal to fulfill them."

"What does the public expect us to deliver," he said.

In the case of the city's animal control, he said the public wants access to the facility to retrieve their pets or to be able to adopt a pet. They also want the animal shelter to stay in compliance with state regulation and to be able to pay for adoptions at the shelter.

To make that easier, he said that the city is planning to make a part-time position at the animal shelter a full time position, which will allow the shelter to be open seven days per week. The city is also planning to make improvements at the shelter, install an Internet connection so the shelter will be able to advertise the availability of animals. There is also a plan to get the animal control officer a used truck that will be better equipped for humanely transporting animals to the shelter.

He said that the city will be using more seasonal employees for things like mowing the parks during the summer to free up the full-time park staff to do other work.

The parks department will also have a parks facility maintenance crew dedicated year around to repairing the small things that break, like a restroom door that will not stay closed, the swing set that is broken, or the buckled concrete ramp for ADA access.