Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Savings Passed Up


Potential Savings in City Operational Costs

In developing the general fund budget for 2013 city council and administration appeared to be turning over every rock to find ways to reduce spending while maintaining basic services and avoiding a tax increase.
Looking over past year’s budgets it was noted that the city was spending around $210,000 to collect $4 million in income taxes.
Research produced an alternative method of collection that could trim $50,000 to $100,000 from the collection costs.
A quasi government agency known as the Regional Income Tax Agency (RITA) http://www.ritaohio.com/about/  provides tax collection services for many Ohio municipalities.
A representative of the agency was invited to make a presentation to Council’s finance committee. The representative stated that RITA could perform the collection services for around $104,000 or 2.6% of the total collected. The city is spending around 5.25% for the same service.
Some attendees at the meeting had concerns about losing local input to the collection system. The presenter offered that some municipalities kept a monitoring employee on the payroll but that option would reduce the total savings available.
No further action was taken by the city and we are again spending money that the city could be using to provide adequate street maintenance or aid the financially strapped parks and recreation budget.
No reason was given other than the local control matter.
Sabina uses RITA and the Mayor of the village (cell 937 218-6609) stated that they were quite pleased with the service. Loveland, a demographic and economic mirror image of Wilmington, also uses RITA and while missing some local input the savings realized more than compensates for that problem. (513-707-1452)
RITA operates in municipalities in the majority of Ohio counties. A local sampling includes Milford, Waynesville, Fairborn and Yellow Springs. (See map) http://www.ritaohio.com/about/rita-map/
Paul Hunter
Contact at paulhunter45177@gmail

No comments:

Post a Comment