The city of Whitefish has proposed a budget of $41 million that’s about $4.8 million bigger than last year.

The budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 adds a new position of human resource director to the city staff, bumps up an engineering technician position from part to full time and gives most city employees a 3.8 percent raise.

However, most of the increase is attributed to spending down accumulated and saved cash balances for infrastructure projects in the resort tax, street, stormwater, water and wastewater funds, City Manager Chuck Stearns said in his budget report.

“We still don’t know some pieces to the puzzle, such as what our allowed mill levy will be for medical insurance, what the year-end cash balances will be and what the mill value will be,” Stearns said. “All of those aspects could change the budget dramatically in the next three months.”

The projected property-tax mill levy rate is the same as last year at this point in the budgeting process.

The Whitefish City Council will conduct work sessions on May 27 and June 9 — tentatively both sessions begin at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall — before holding a public hearing on the preliminary budget on June 16. There could be additional workshops over the summer prior to a public hearing on the final budget on Aug. 18.

Stearns said the human resource director position, penciled in at an annual salary of $63,000, is being added to help lessen the workload on himself, the city attorney and city clerk.

“A rough rule of thumb is that you need one personnel or HR employee for each 100 employees and we are almost at that level for full-time employees,” Stearns said in his report, adding that Whitefish employs 120 to 135 people including seasonal hires.

A new police officer position is in the budget for a school resource officer that is funded entirely by a federal grant, with the local matching contribution provided by the Whitefish school district.

A current part-time engineering technician position will become a full-time geographic information systems/information technology position.

Stearns said he’s conservatively estimating that the property tax base on which the mill levy rate is set will grow by only 2 percent in the coming fiscal year, compared to 2.2 percent growth over the past year.

“If it grows more than that, we can make a decision to increase cash balances, increase or restore some expenditures or reduce the property tax levy,” he said.

Stearns is projecting a decrease in the city’s cash reserves from 11.5 percent last year to 9.7 percent in the coming year.

“I am hoping that the cash balances levels will be better than I am projecting right now,” he said.

The Whitefish Community Library has asked the city to increase its mill levy from 5.4 to 6.2 mills to be on par with Flathead County’s current library mill levy.

“While there was no discussion that we would ever increase the 5.4 mills when we took over the library and we don’t necessarily want to tie our level to the county level, I will say that the Whitefish Community Library board and director have done a phenomenal job providing library services during and after the transition with a bare-bones budget,” Stearns commented.

On the revenue side of the budget, the city expects to bring in over $2 million more than last year, largely from additional property tax revenue because of a higher mill value, increased revenue from building permit fees, higher resort tax collections, increased tax increment finance district revenues and especially because of higher water and wastewater system revenues from a likely $1.75 million state revolving fund loan.

With Whitefish Finance Director Corey Swisher resigning April 25 during the height of the number-crunching, the lion’s share of the budget work fell on Stearns this year.

“With the economy continuing to improve and increase building permit revenues, the fiscal year 2015 budget was still difficult to balance,” he said.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.