4311 – Salaried Employees
We are a bit off track with our salary budget due to Jeannine staying with us into January. When we established this budget back in September, we were thinking her last day would be in December. Even so, the new amount is less than 0.4% higher than our original budget.
4312 – Hourly Employees
I would like to increase this line to increase the hours of one of our Circulation Clerks. We used to have two clerks who worked more than 20 hours per week and thus qualified for IMRF benefits. A few years ago, one of them asked to reduce her hours, and we never replaced those hours in the schedule. Lorena has indicated that she could really use those hours back, especially as she is spending significant time and energy working on her managerial skills. The proposed increase would be a 3% increase over our budgeted amount for the year.
4331 – IMRF
Adding another IMRF-eligible position in Circulation would obviously increase our IMRF obligation overall. The proposed increase is about 1% over our original budgeted amount for the year.
4332 – FICA
Similarly, with increases to salaries there will be a corresponding increase to FICA of approximately 1%.
4333 – Insurance
While insurance costs per employee are actually lower than we had budgeted for the year, carrying Jeannine into the new year increased our cost beyond the budgeted amount. The needed increase is less than 0.5% over the original budget.
4365 – Accounting
Our accountants increased their fees a bit this year. The proposed amendment is about 2% higher than the original budget.
4417 – SWAN/OCLC
SWAN runs on a July-June fiscal year, so we don’t know the fees for the coming year until after our fiscal year has begun. We budget for a nominal increase each year, but this year’s increase was a bit bigger than anticipated for us, 2.6% over our original budget.
4418 – Technology
The majority of our Technology budget goes to pay our IT consultant, which is the backbone of just about everything we do here. In recent years, they have taken on the added responsibilities of managing our Meeting Room A/V equipment as well as other technology odds and ends. We pay them hourly, and they haven’t raised their hourly fee since we hired them. But they are spending more time on us than in past years, so we need to raise this line a fair amount. I’m proposing a 13.1% increase over the original budget.
4424 – Newsletter Printing
Our newsletter printing cost is usually pretty stable from one year to the next, but we are seeing a price increase this year. The increase is about 2.5% higher than our original budget.
4436 – Landscape Maintenance
The need to find a new landscaper came as a surprise, and the lowest bid was still significantly higher than our previous company. The new amount is about 20% higher than our original budget.
4553 – Postage Bulk Fees
Postage is going up again, which affects our bulk newsletter mailings. I’m now estimating that our costs for the year will be around 7.5% higher than our original budget.
4900 – Reimbursed Expenses
This budget line is actually offset dollar-for-dollar with our reimbursable revenues line, so an increase here represents no net change to our budget. The reason for the difference here is that Jeannine has opted to continue buying into our insurance pool, which she is entitled to do. Even though it won’t affect the bottom line, this change still needs to be reflected in the budget.
7001 – Special Reserves Expenses
The amount that we budgeted for Special Reserves spending was based on anticipated needs as outline in our capital needs assessment. What we didn’t budget for was having our final renovation bill linger into the new year. That final payment of more than $100,000 immediately blew past our budgeted amount. The new proposed amount accounts for anticipated expenditures remaining for the year.
Totals: The new total expenditures in the amended budget would be $2,341,048.67, which is significantly lower than our original budget of $2,527,524.33. With anticipated revenues of $2,341,753.94, the proposed changes would keep us in the black for the year.
Recommendation: I recommend that you approve the proposed revisions to the FY23 annual budget.