Cities Applying Brakes to Travel Budgets
By: Michael Noyes | 2010-02-22
BOZEMAN - City administrators around the state say they plan to hold the line on travel budgets and make increased use of technology as local governments look to trim costs in a tight economy.
In Bozeman, the city budgeted $316,068 but spent only $171,880.90 in Fiscal Year 2009, the most recently completed fiscal year. Similarly, Missoula spent less than half of their budgeted travel money in FY 2009, according to figures provided by the two cities.
In Billings around $118,000 of the $464,000 spent on travel and training in FY09 came from specific grants for those activities.
"The city portion should hold constant or go down slightly," for the current fiscal year, said Billings City Administrator Tina Volek.
Currently, any request for travel must be signed off on by someone in her office, and when travel is complete the bills come back through her office for approval, Volek said. She said the city is trying to emphasize more in-state travel and other methods to reduce spending.
When Volek first came to Billings as city administrator a few years ago, she said it was customary to send four or five employees to Orlando in February for training on the city computer system.
"The appearance was not good," said Volek.
The city is now transitioning to a new computer system which has its headquarters in Colorado, and Volek said one or two employees attend conferences and bring back information for others.
Helena spent $123,394 on travel and training in FY09. City Manager Ron Alles said while they will try to keep costs down, he would approve that amount again if needed.
"We're going to cinch up our bootstraps this year like everybody," he said. However, "It would be irresponsible just to slash training for the sake of slashing training."
He said this year and next are going to be tight ones economically for all local governments. With that trend, Alles said he's seeing more webinars, training that is conducted online.
"The more we can take advantage of those, obviously, we're going to do it," he said.
Missoula Finance Director Brent Ramharter said the city is asking employees to make increased use of webinars.
"It's starting to take hold," Ramharter said. "It saves on travel and that's the wave of the future."
However, Great Falls City Manager Greg Doyon said he isn't certain online training is as effective as in-person classes or seminars.
Doyon said he did not attend a city manager association meeting last year held in Quebec because of the cost. The conference was offered online but was still a significant expense.
"I do find them to be pretty expensive, and I'm not sure the experience is as (worthwhile)," he said. "I think it's an option. It depends on what it is. It's going to be hard to ignore people coming in and knocking on the door, things like that."
Great Falls did adopt a policy that all out-of-state travel for the current fiscal year has to be approved by the city manager's office.
Doyon said he expects that policy to be in place for next year as well.
In Bozeman, City Manager Chris Kukulski said cost-saving measures have included using Montana State University for the city's mandated ethics training, which greatly reduced the costs that would have been incurred by holding it out of the area or bringing someone in to conduct it.
Kukulski said the difference between the amount budgeted and money spent in 2009 can partly be attributed to vacancies in the police department. Around 90 percent of new hires go through the Police Academy training. He also said the city works to create a mentality that just because departments have money budgeted does not mean they feel compelled to spend it if there isn't a need.
Total Spending on Travel and Training for Fiscal Year 2009. Cities were asked to provide the total for all travel and training related expenses, including food, lodging, registration costs and per diem:
Billings - $464,000
Bozeman - $171,880
Butte Silver-Bow - $208,854*
Missoula - $238,066
Great Falls - $220,491
Helena - $123,394
Kalispell - $92,172
*City and county combined
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