City Expenses - "Your Tax Dollars At Work"

Expenses - Classified Two Different Ways

By Service or Program:
Most cities will tell you how much they are spending on the different kinds of services or programs they provide.  

    Examples are park maintenance, police patrol or street maintenance.

By Type of Expense:
Sometimes you see it by the nature of the expense.  This includes salaries, supplies purchased, capital expenditures.

Most provide both views.  This way you can know what services and programs your tax dollars are buying and how they are being provided.  It is common that the city provides the programs with its own employees.  This causes employee expense to be a major budget item.

Types of Services and Programs:

Administration - This general category is made up of many items which some would not consider "administration".  For example, the elected city councils and city building maintenance expense is often included under this broad category.

City Councils provide policy leadership and direction in your city.  They are your link to "city hall" (along with the Mayor).  They meet throughout the year and deliberate on all the issues that come to cities.  Once they feel adequately informed on a given subject, the effort often results in policy direction in the form of ordinance (local laws) and resolutions (indications of policy direction).

The Mayor can be a member of the Council (in a "Council Manager" form of government) and in that case, the person is often elected by fellow council members and chairs the meetings.  A "City Manager" is the "chief administrative officer" (CAO) of the city in these cases.  A Mayor can also be elected independently of the council and is the CAO of the city.  The CAO is responsible for the implementation of council policy and overseeing the daily activities of the city.

Administration also includes Finance, Data Processing, Facilities, Human Resources, City Clerk, and other administrative tasks.

Planning / Community Development - This department is responsible for implementing the land use policies of the city.  This includes review of building permits and proposed developments of property.  This department is made up of planning consultants and inspectors who help insure that your community is developed and maintained in the way that agrees with the Council's policies.  This function is part of the "Natural Resources" category above.

Engineering / Public Works - Often referred to as Public Works, this department oversees much of the construction occurring in the city.  This can be construction of city projects (such as street improvements) or of private projects (such as sidewalk or side sewer installation).  This department typically consists of engineers who are uniquely qualified in their field.  This function is part of the "Natural Resources" category above.

Police - In addition to the patrol officers that you see in their vehicles on city streets, the police department includes the money for jailing the offenders they capture, providing accurate records about their activities, insuring that all members of the police department are adequately trained for their complicated job, and the many other related items for modern law enforcement.  Recently, a trend for crime prevention has seen budgets like DARE (drug awareness resistance education), school resource officers, community policing and similar programs in your police department.  At 21% of total non-utility costs (total costs not counting utilities which are paid for by direct user fees), the police budget is one of the largest city priorities.

Fire and Emergency Rescue - While modern construction standards in most cities have helped to reduce the risk of significant loss during a fire (remember when entire cities would burn down - like Seattle in the early 1800's?), the fire departments have gotten into another "growth industry".  The emergency rescue calls in most fire departments have kept them busier than they ever were when fighting fires.  As a result, in addition to the fire trucks and firemen, you will see medical supplies and medics in today's fire budget.  Another significant city priority, the fire budgets are 12% of the non-utility total.  Keep in mind, however, that this does not include all the fire districts which are not included in the city budget totals presented here!

Parks and Recreation - The size of the park and recreation program can vary greatly.  This includes maintaining the parks, recreation programs, special facilities such as swimming pools or community centers and halls.  This function is part of the "Natural Resources" category above.

Street Maintenance - This is represented by the "Transportation" category above.  This includes maintenance, cleaning, maintaining the signals, painting (stripes, etc), signs, snow removal and lots of other street costs that we all take for granted.

Water and Sewer (and other) Utilities -At 33% of the whole, utilities are easily the largest single type of city government expenditure.  These services are paid for by user fees that are specifically designed to offset the costs.  As a result, the lack of a tax subsidy (in most cases) reduces the challenge to find ways to provide adequate utility services.  Therefore, when considering tax issues, most governments are not faced with reducing services to water or sewer customers.