Las Vegas headed into new fiscal year with balanced budget

By Conor Shine

Wednesday, April 1, 2015 | 4:16 p.m.

For the first time since 2007, Las Vegas’s budget will be in the black heading into the next fiscal year, city staff told the council today.

“Our outlook has improved greatly,” City Manager Betsy Fretwell said. “Things are recovering and we’re starting to see that in our numbers.”

The positive report was heralded by City Council members as a welcome sign as the city continues to claw its way back from the depths of the recession.

The city expects its general fund budget, which pays for government operations, to grow by 6.4 percent to $523 million next fiscal year, which starts July 1.

Increased costs, meanwhile, are being driven by raises for some union employees, increased funding for Metro Police and the addition of 57 new positions.

Those new jobs will be scattered to various departments, including Parks and Recreation, Public Works and Human Resources. Even with the additional positions, however, the city’s workforce will be about 20 percent smaller than it was prior to the recession.

“We’re still behind. We’re trying to restore as we can, but we don’t have the revenue to restore all of our services,” Chief Financial Officer Mark Vincent said.

The increased costs will be offset by higher property and sales tax revenues.

The arrival of the city’s new medical marijuana industry has also helped boost the bottom line, growing the fees it receives for business licensing by 5 percent compared to the current fiscal year.

The improving budget picture also will allow the city to invest another $60 million in capital projects for parks, roads and repairs to city buildings.

Although the upcoming fiscal year will be the first the city starts with a balanced budget in nearly a decade, it has managed to balance its budget without drawing on reserves each of the past three years by cutting costs and greater-than-anticipated revenue.

The city’s tentative budget will be submitted to the state for review next month before a final approval from the council in May.