Gas tax increase means more funding for South Valley Connector

Pocatello City Council and the city’s finance department met today to begin developing the 2016 fiscal year budget. One item could help get a city project out of the red.

In February, interim CFO Joyce Stroschein told the City Council the South Valley Connector project was facing a nearly $443,000 deficit. At the first budget development meeting Thursday, she said there could be help out of that deficit soon.

“Additional monies are going to come in, going to assist the city in street maintenance or street projects,” Stroschein said. “The big one on our horizon this year that’s in progress is the South Valley Connector.

The new funds will be coming from the 7-cent gas tax increase and the increase in car registration fees. The funds will be going into the city’s highway user tax revenue, which is expected to grow 28 percent because of the increase.

That means the city is estimated to receive an extra $500,000 in funds.

Everything else in the budget has little wiggle room. A lawsuit against the city in 2014 resulted in halting the ability to transfer utility funds to the general fund. The city compensated by increasing property taxes for the 2015 fiscal year.

“It reduced our flexibility in funding because a source that we used to be dependent upon went away and put us more reliant on property tax to compensate for current services,” she said.

Stroschein assured City Council that Pocatello is fine.

“It just means you don’t have a lot of additional revenue,” she said. “So they want to do more or they want to spend more, the (available) dollars don’t give you that ability.”

The city will continue department briefs for the budget for the next couple of weeks. The first budget decision session will be on June 4.

The final study session for the city’s 2016 budget will be July 9.