The Operating Budget for Savannah

Savanah is a city in Georgia City that has been growing tremendously over the past five years. As a fast-developing city, the city administration is committed to ensuring steady development. The main focus is on the city’s population primarily due to the need to monitor [and ensure the community receives the needed services (Savannah GA government, 2019). The mission of the local government is to provide exceptional services to businesses, guests as well as residents. The goals of the city include the revitalization of infrastructure, ensuring excellent health services, and eradicating of poverty. The departments include the finance department, information technology, development services, and code compliance department additionally. There are coastal workforce services. Arguably, by 2021, the city aims at raising the response of 95% of priority one calls to 7 minutes or less. There will be a reduction in crime to 817, which is a 27% reduction by 2022 (Savannah GA government, 2019). This plan is to ensure a safer city where fire and emergency response will be top-notch. Significantly, by 2022, the streets will be on a resurfacing rotation of 20 years, including a 60% sidewalk placement. Arguably in response to flooding, the city will have a 25% reduction in structure flooding as well as a 5% drop in street flooding by 2025. Arguably, the strategic plan seeks to reduce the poverty rate by 1% every 4th year. This plan to reduce poverty includes the provision of soft skills to 50% of high school-age youth (Savannah GA government, 2019). This plan will reduce unemployment by 15%. There will also be an online dashboard by 2020 that will provide information to residents. Significantly, by 2021, the city will recognize its employees as a sizeable perming organization where 100% of the workforce will be aligned to evaluation. The plan seeks to revitalize the neighborhood based on sustainable development. Additionally, the strategic project by the city authority aims at improving service delivery (Savannah GA government, 2019). The objective is to ensure further good and quality governance of the city. Arguably, the city being a coastal city attracts various guest6s, and therefore there is a need to keep increasing expenditure as well as revenue sourcing. The sources of revenue in the year’s budget include government activities. These activities include government assets such as restaurants. The agency aims to collect a total of $ 1, 074,987, by the end of the year. These funds are crucial in the revitalization of the city. Other sources of the government’s revenue include the collection of taxes from the code allocation as well as licensing of the businesses, which collects $ 2, 006,876 (Savannah GA government, 2019). Significantly, the charging of parking fees within all streets allocated for parking in the city will also be a vital source. Arguably, the financial expenditure will focus on the revitalization of the city and the provision of soft skills training. Through these expenditures, which are likely to amount to 500 000 and $ 300 000 respectively in the second quarter of every year, the two-vote heads will be covered. This allocation will ensure the training of 5000 youth every year to the end of 2024, arguably (Savannah GA government, 2019). There is a need to reduce liability by 30% every year within a set period of the next five years covered by the budget. Significantly, the development department needs to receive a large allocation in the budget. This fact is due to various projects such as the revitalization of streets and the building of sidewalks. To enhance infrastructure, the department allocation will include $372, 897, which will be useful in the resurfacing once in the entire period as the first quarter of the 20-year resurfacing. Additionally, an amount of 234,900 will be awarded to the department of information technology, which will conduct the dissemination of information (Savannah GA government, 2019). Also, the money will be used for the maintenance of city websites. 

Funding will be done through funds from the revenue collection and activities. This amount adds up to $ 3, 081,863 every year, and a total of $ 11109367 for five years. Additionally, the agency, through its departments, will involve donors through initiatives such as corporate social responsibility, which incorporates companies in the development plan. Significantly, the agency will invest in capital projects to fast-track the development agenda. For instance, the building of a public information technology resource center in the city will enhance growth. This project will ensure the creation of a resource center for soft skill training in techno-savvy skills as well as the provision of information. This center will charge standardized fees to non-participants of the training program. The funding of this project will be through grants from the federal government and allocations from the Georgia state government. Debt administration will include the negotiation of payment strategies by the city to debtors ( Liu & Tyagi, 2017 ). As a result of the need to develop the town, there is an inevitable need to incur debt, especially in the implementation of capital projects. An annual allocation of $ 598799 will be made for repayment annually. The overhead costs will include the rents for the various premises that are leased to the agency ( Chohan & Jacobs, 2018 ). For instance, the departments such as that of public service have leased premises as a result of a shortage of agency-owned offices. The remittal amounts to $10000 annually, which will account for $ 50000 for five years. Within the plan to employ more workforce, the city will incur step fixed costs. This cost may be from the rolling out of new units in various departments, especially the public workforce unit, which will require an amount of $ 578,656 annually for payments and maintenance of new programs. 

As the city expands the delivery of services like training over five years, variable costs will be incurred. Arguably, more money will be spent on the workforce due to the increase in the number of services (Savannah GA government, 2019). Necessarily, these costs will be as a result of an increase in what the city authority is offering to the citizens. Ultimately, the services will grow hand multiple as a result of development over the five years. Arguably, one of the various foreseeable problems is the lack of accountability within the multiple departments, especially the finance department. This challenge is likely to dent holes in the budget leading to a loss of funds. Additionally, there is expected to be a lack of submission of revenue through the evasion of license payments for businesses. Essentially, to reduce expenditure, the city needs to apply strategies such as partnerships with more corporations. These corporations will fund initiatives such as training programs for youth through corporate responsibility. Additionally, the city should also procure more building equipment to avoid hiring contractors to develop the city for over five years. 

Conclusion 

Significantly, the agency needs to ensure that it implements the strategic plan for 2019-2024. Essentially, the strategic plan rolls out over five years, and hence there is a need to ensure that the annual breakdown is vital. Significantly, to cushion the budget from failing to meet its goals, there is a need to involve strategies such as involving partners. Through partnerships and procurement of equipment, there will be a cut in costs. 

Reference 

Chohan, U. W., & Jacobs, K. (2018). Public Value as Rhetoric: a budgeting approach. International Journal of Public Administration, 41 (15), 1217-1227. 

Liu, Y., & Tyagi, R. K. (2017). Outsourcing to convert fixed costs into variable costs: A competitive analysis. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 34 (1), 252-264. 

Savannah GA government. (2019). Savannah Forward Strategic Plan Community Outreach Summaries by Category https://www.savannahga.gov/SearchsearchPhrase=Savannah%20Forward%20Strategic%20Plan%20Community%20Outreach%20Summaries%20by%20Category