AURORA | When Beth McCartee walks into the computer lab at Moorhead Recreation Center, she sees more than a handful of machines.
She observes enthusiastic teens playing computer games and timid seniors delicately typing on the keyboard. For McCartee, public computers are valuable assets to people of multiple generations in the city, and she says they should be all over.
“I think there’s a need for more,” she said. “I love the computers here. Having this resource is important.”
McCartee is not alone in her desire for more city-wide computer centers; city officials also recognize the need. Adding two more computer labs is one of several new projects that city officials would like to pay for next year.
The city currently has two computer labs at Beck Recreation Center and Moorhead Recreation Center, which are being used frequently, said Patti Bateman, director of the city’s Library and Cultural Services Department.
“The kids and neighborhood residents come in and use it because it’s much more convenient than trying to navigate their way down to a library facility,” she said. The labs could also be convenient locations for people to drop off and pick up library books they’ve put holds on, Bateman said.
It would cost $351,431 to pay for a computer lab at the former Hoffman Heights Library and one in a storefront location on East Colfax Avenue.
In addition to computer labs, city officials also want to pay for a study to determine whether the city should be its own city and county, increase employee pay by 1 percent, and add new staff members to help with redevelopment projects.
The 2013 proposed budget, which still has to be formally adopted by council members, is $250.8 million. That’s up 7.4 percent from the 2012 budget of $233.5 million.
Part of the increase includes about $6.7 million in one-time expenses for 2013, including $5.2 million for council’s priority initiatives and $1.5 million for other one-time expenses. The city is paying for those one-time expenses with funds from revenues that were higher than originally expected.
“The good news is that revenues are up pretty well through the first part of the year,” said Jason Batchelor, the city’s finance director.
Some of the increased sales tax revenue can be attributed to residents buying cars, Batchelor said.
“Aurora residents replace autos or buy autos at double-digit growth rates. That might be because during the recession some people probably held back on replacing a car or getting a car,” Batchelor said, adding that he doesn’t count on residents buying cars at the same high rate in the future.
City officials still have to close a $3.1 million shortfall this year, but that’s significantly less than the shortfall in previous years. This year, the city had to close a $5.9 million budget shortfall. In 2011, the shortfall was $7 million and in 2010 it was $15 million.
Batchelor is careful not to raise anyone’s expectations of reversing budget cuts.
“Our primary focus is making sure we continue to be conservative but realistic in our approach,” he said. “We certainly have gotten really good revenues through the first part of this year. For us, the challenge is digging into those and trying to decide what we can reasonably expect to continue on into the future.”
In the long term, the city expects to face a $1.8 million shortfall in 2014, a $3.2 million shortfall in 2015 and a $0.8 million shortfall in 2017.
The focus of the 2013 proposed budget is to maintain current service levels while funding council’s new priority initiatives, amounting to about $7.9 million. Those include: a city and county feasibility study at a cost of $250,000; adding two new computer labs and library materials at a cost of $501,431; adding staff members to help with the city’s redevelopment projects like the Fan Fare building at a cost of $2.2 million, and funding projects related to FasTracks light rail at a cost of $1 million. Most of those are one-time costs.
For the first time in two years, all 2,664 city employees are expected to get a salary raise of 1 percent, at a cost of about $1.8 million. Police officers and firefighters currently earn an average salary of about $74,000, and all other employees earn about $53,000.
In addition to the pay raise, employees won’t be expected to take any mandatory unpaid vacation days in 2013. In 2010, employees had to take two furlough days, and they had one mandatory furlough day in 2011 and 2012. The pay raise also applies to City Council members, who earn about $12,750 on average annually.
Residents had the chance to offer their ideas about how the city should be spending its money at an Aurora City Council meeting Sept. 10.
Some Aurora residents, including Janice Gibson, took issue with the city’s proposal to redevelop two pools into “spraygrounds.” The Pheasant Run and Village Green pools were closed because of budget cuts in early 2010, and it would cost the city $1 million to convert both into spraygrounds.
“I wonder why you would spend (money) to convert an already established pool with a splash park,” said Gibson, who lives in the Pheasant Run neighborhood. “Why wouldn’t the money be spent to open the pool and maintain it?”
Batchelor said the operating costs for spraygrounds are much lower, and the city doesn’t have to pay for a lifeguard and chemicals needed to keep the pool clean.
“This is a great way to put in an amenity for the community while not necessarily increasing operating costs back to what they were,” he said.
Other residents were excited about the city’s 2013 budget goals. Ruth Fountain, a member of the Aurora Museum Foundation board, thanked council members for allocating money in the proposed budget to expand the Aurora History Museum to house a historic Aurora trolley.
“It’s wonderful,” said Fountain, who came to the meeting with another Aurora resident in support of the project. It would cost $1 million to expand the Aurora History Museum.
Council members will have the option to make changes to the budget at an Oct. 6 budget workshop, and they will formally adopt the 2013 budget at their Oct. 29 council meeting.
Reach reporter Sara Castellanos at 720-449-9036 or sara@aurorasentinel.com.
How ironic, Aurora’s council members have spent years annexing land on the edges of Aurora, supporting subdivisions on these margins, annexing land in three counties, all because they could. This sprawl, according to our present council members, is causing inadequate county services for Aurora’s citizens. The present council members have a solution, a City and County of Aurora; these council members will spend 250,000 dollars on a study to see if Aurora should be a City and County.
Any bets on what this study will find?