Six months into fiscal year, Hawthorne sets budget workshop

Over halfway through the current fiscal year, the City of Hawthorne has its preliminary budget completed said Interim City Manager Ellen Vause.  The city commission will be meeting for a budget workshop on Friday, April 15, to discuss the information and make recommendations.

Vause said she reviewed adopted budget revenues and expenditures from 2009 to 2010 as well as the six-month revenues and expenditures from 2010 to 2011to balance the budget.

“Essentially, I looked at where we were a year ago, where we were six months ago, where we’ve been and where we need to go,” she said.

Based on the information presented to them at the workshop, commissioners will decide the next step in the process.

“They may send me back to work on it some more, or they may go right to action at the next commission meeting, it can really go either way,” Vause said.

The city’s budget was initially approved in September 2010, but was later found to be out of balance and contained numerous accounting errors. In December, the commission fired then City Manager Ed Smyth who has been on the job there since October 2009. The move came amid a review of the city’s budget. Since then, city officials have been struggling to keep the city’s finances intact.

Florida law requires a municipality to annually adopt a budget which must be adopted by ordinance or resolution.  The budget workshop is the next step in remedying the matter.