Seneca Council approves Budget

The Seneca City Council has approved funds for the coming fiscal year. At a special called meeting Tuesday night, the Seneca City Council voted unanimously for the 2015 budget. Seneca Mayor Dan Alexander expressed relief after the long budget process. “It is a long process and I and City Clerk/Treasurer Joel Seavey start around February or March. He actually does a lot to pull all this together too, but it takes several months to be able to get the budget together. I am definitely glad that is behind us. This year we sort of held the line on any type of increases as far as any raises.” When budgeting, the community comes first, adds Mayor Alexander. “We try to make sure that we are thinking about this community and we are trying to make sure that we are moving the community forward. This year there were not any increases of any kind proposed in the budget and that is how I presented it to council. I felt last year was enough, but I felt good about what we were doing last year, but this year we were able to put the budget together without any type of increases. Council supported the budget and we got a unanimous vote.” This year’s $40.77 million budget is actually seven different budgets, concludes Mayor Alexander. “We have seven different budgets. We are required to do everything that is not the same do them on different budgets, so, it took a little while to go through but not long, it was simple. We have work sessions to talk about all this stuff way ahead of time but it went good. July 1 we will start a new budget and we are just looking forward to closing up this fiscal year. I am looking forward to 2014-15 fiscal year, hoping it will be a good year, there are a lot of things going on in Seneca.” The city’s more than 8,000 residents can look forward to no property tax hikes or increases for services when the new fiscal year begins on July 1.