Patrick McLean's Messages

On Tuesday, June 4, 2024, Ypsilanti City Council completed its work on the 2024-25 budget.  We made some serious progress on bringing stability to the city's fiscal situation.  Among the changes we made were:

1. Reduced the revenue shortfall for 2024-25 from $3.6M to about $2.9M.  That means less money is taken from the General Fund balance.  We achieved this with a series of cuts to contract services, office supplies and other administrative lines, as well as revisions to several categories of estimated revenues.

2. Provided more accuracy for our revenue estimates by adopting a "vacancy credit," which accounts for personnel that don't work for a full 12 months in the year.

3. Made it more difficult to spend money on new General Fund projects by requiring that spending above $10,000 not already budgeted will require five city council votes.

4. For me, most importantly, we established a new and long overdue Rainy Day fund into which we transferred $2 million.  Sound fiscal management practices suggest we should have about 3 to 4 months of expenditures in a Rainy Day fund, meaning about $5 to $6.7 million. This initial $2 million is a significant down payment.

There were some efforts to reduce police staffing, which I strongly objected to.  This would undermine the progress that Police Chief Moore has been making at the very moment when we're finally nearing full staffing levels.

The new budget passed unanimously before the deadline and will go into effect on July 1.

If you'd like to talk about the budget, please join me at my usual coffee hours on Sunday from 11:00 to 12:30 at Sweetwater's on Cross Street.

I am pleased to serve you!

Patrick