From a financial perspective, although Branson’s revenues are stable, its finances will be challenging for the next couple of years as the city repairs what Branson City Administrator Dean Kruithof calls a breakdown of Branson’s financial system. The breakdown was just one of a long list of items Kruithoff attributes to causing Branson’s current budget strain.
He said, “It would be so much easier to walk in and say it’s any one of these problems that’s causing the budget strain but that’s really not the case. Any one of these issues individually could be taken care of but it’s when you have one building upon another building upon another that has created the kind of strain that we are dealing with right now.”
Kruithof’s comments were made at a special Saturday combination meeting of the Branson Board of Aldermen and all three of Branson’s standing committees, Personnel, Capital Improvement, and Budget and Finance held at the Branson Rec Plex Sep. 7. Also in attendance was John Petty and Janice Larned from Direct Offices, L.L.C., the company hired by the city on a interim basis for financial consulting assistance, and David L. Cochran, of Cochran Head Vick & Co., PC, the firm that performed the outside audit on the city last year.
In her introductory remarks, Branson Mayor Raeanne Presley said Branson’s City Administrator Dean Kruithof and his team would provide a fiscal reality check, along with a strong strategy to improve the city’s financial discipline and enhance fiscal responsibility at every level of the organization. She said, “I want to emphasize – our purpose today is not to look back on decisions of past administrations, but to look forward.”
Kruithof made a power point presentation entitled, “2009 Budget Challenges Ahead.” He used the analogy of a river to represent the budget pointing out there are any number of tributaries flowing into the river, each adds water and increased pressure and the river can hold only so much water.
As he started going over the items making up the tributaries adding depth and pressure to Branson’s “budget river” he indicated that any city might have to deal with one or two of the items “But” he said, “Any of them coming up together and starting to multiply is starting to create pressure.” Although he listed a number of tributaries contributing to Branson’s current budget stress the one seeming to have the most impact and getting the most attention was the tributary entitled, “Breakdown of Financial System.”
In describing what Kruithof called, “A system breakdown” he said, there has been a lack of effective contract management, no reconciliation to budget, no project accounting, the city has entered into some extremely sophisticated agreements such as the TIF agreements and the city has an obsolete financial system. He stressed the city of Branson, although very small in terms of size and permanent residents actually has to operate on the same financial level as most large cities yet, the resources of its finance department, both in terms of personnel and systems, are not adequate to do the job.
Kruithof said, “Compared to a lot of other cities we are still in wonderful condition wonderful situation.” He went on to say that they don’t view these as permanent problems but as problems that will have to be corrected so Branson may move forward.
