Beaver Dam To Adopt Borrowing Plan At Budget Time

(Beaver Dam) City officials in Beaver Dam will begin budget deliberations in committee in two weeks. The city’s Administrative Committee set the dates of October 17th and October 24th to review the document; both Wednesday’s with a 6:30pm start time in city council chambers at the municipal building. Finance Director John Somers noted that budget deliberations this year would also include discussion about the city’s 2019 borrowing plan. The Capital Improvements Plan, or CIP, maps out equipment purchases, infrastructure improvements and street repairs over five years while locking-in spending for the upcoming year.  In the past, the city had approved the borrowing months after the budget adoption. Mayor Becky Glewen changed the process this year because of how closely the borrowing plan is related to the budget. When city officials exceeded a self-imposed borrowing plan this past March to pay for downtown revitalization and street repairs, it was too late in some cases to bid out projects for the year. While city officials were presented with their budget books Monday night, the binder included only department-by-department budgets requests and not a breakdown of the overall city budget. Somers says he is awaiting final health insurance numbers before crunching the preliminary numbers.