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City Budget Basics Printable 2009-11 City Budget in Brief Despite the deep cuts the City has made, structural issues continue to place stress on the City's budget. The structural issues result from revenues not being sufficient to support the services and programs the City provides. In Oregon, local government revenues come primarily from property taxes, transient room taxes, franchise fees, state allocated revenues, fines, user fees (charges for services) and System Development Charges (building impact fees). Oregon cities are behind the rest of the nation because of a high reliance on property tax, and because they have little authority to raise new revenues with local taxes. While Oregon cities are heavily reliant on property taxes, State Measures 5 and 50, passed in the 1990's limit property tax revenues that Oregon cities can raise by establishing permanent tax rates and limiting growth in tax assessed values to three percent a year. The City can only receive a temporary increase in this permanent rate by citizen vote. Bend has the lowest permanent property tax rate at $2.80 per $1000 of tax assessed value when compared to other cities of similar size. What kind of cuts has the City made, and how are you working to be more efficient? The City has made deep cuts in the past year, reducing its workforce by 18 percent (43 layoffs and 56 vacancies left unfilled). In fact, the City has fewer employees per capita now then it did five years ago. We continue to streamline operations and look for efficiencies, but need to address structural problems in the budget to ensure long-term financial stability. With Bend's property tax rate at $2.80 per $1000 of tax assessed value, a property with an assessed value $200,500 pays about $557 per year for public safety, street maintenance, transit and other basic operations provided by the City. What's one example of a critical need right now? Street maintenance funding is at a critical level, and the City needs to find a sustainable local funding source to address the backlog of projects. Restoration of pavement near the end of its service life will typically cost four to five times more than preventive maintenance performed in a timely manner. The cost to repair our current backlog of street maintenance is approximately $12.5 million. Without additional funding, the cost will balloon to $20 million by 2013.
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