Where the Money Goes.

From the 2010-2011 City Budget Document approved by the Council Tuesday.

The General Fund Budget will allow all departments to provide service levels at or near the same level as the previous fiscal year. Based on the Budget Ways & Means Committee recommended budget for fiscal 2011, the projected ending fund balance for the General Fund will decrease to approximately $2,774,167. This amount includes the three months operating reserves for emergencies of other approved expenditures. Additionally, expenditures exceed revenues by approximately $421,300. Capital expenditures account for approximately $401,593 and are essentially funded through the accumulated fund balance. For the 1995 fiscal year, a policy was established to maintain a minimum fund balance equal to 33.33% of the General Fund annual operating expenditures excluding capital improvements. In Fiscal year 2000, the Budget Ways & Means Committee revised that amount to a recommended 25% which was approved by the Council with the adoption ofthe budget. This year a 25% level is again being recommended.

NASCAR THIS WEEK

By Monte Dutton

Sponsored by Curry Automotive

Timing May be Right for Earnhardt Jr.

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- In terms of the Chase for the Sprint Cup, Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s forecast isn’t too dour. Following a respectable seventh-place finish at Michigan International Speedway, Earnhardt is 14th in the standings, just 81 points out of "Chase position," meaning the top 12.

He’s ahead of two drivers, Ryan Newman and Jamie McMurray, who have won races this year. In terms of expectations, however, Earnhardt is having another difficult year. He has more fans than anyone else in NASCAR, and they expect him to win multiple races and championships.

The expectations may be unreasonable, but they come with the territory of being the son of a seven-time champion.

Asked what he had to say to his fans about the latest race, Earnhardt said, "Hopefully, they enjoyed (the) good run, and I hope that I can bring more of them to them, man. We’ve just got to have a good car, but with the way these races go at the end, you’ve got to have a ton of luck, too, to make a lot of right calls and have the best car at the end.

"But you’ve got to put a good car on the race track, and Lance (McGrew, his crew chief) has done that the last two weeks ... real good cars."

The timing just might be right. The regular season has 11 more races, affording Earnhardt ample opportunity to reach the top 12 for the Chase, which consists of the final 10 races.

Earnhardt has been in the top 12 after seven of the 15 races in the season to date, five of them in a row at one point.

Earnhardt began the season impressively, finishing a fast-closing second in the Daytona 500 after making a breathtaking charge that fell just short. The Michigan finish matched his best performance since, equaling a seventh-place finish at Bristol. He also finished eighth at Texas, the site of his first Cup victory on April 2, 2000.

"This is the kind of run we want to have," he said after the Heluva Good! 400. "We can do it. The guys taking (the car) to the racetrack have just got to get it right.

Seems ya never really catch up to reality. Talk of "moderate" housing that costs $60-$80,000 still seems odd.

I can remember the folks frettin’ ‘bout bein’ able to afford the $63 a month payment on our small three bedroom brick home. The price for the new house, with a basement was somewhere in the $13,000 range.

I haven’t lived in a vacuum all these years, but when I see economy cars bein’ advertised for about the same money today, I still somehow make the comparison.

I’m not makin’ some pitch about things bein’ better or cheaper back then. It just always jolts the senses tryin’ to get a handle on the reality of value.

‘Course it still shocks me ta see penny candy goin’ for a dime these days.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’

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Weekly Columns

CLICK and CLACK

TALK CARS

Dear Tom and Ray:

With all the news about uncontrolled acceleration, my wife has decided that she wants to be prepared in case it ever happens to her. We know the proper thing to do is shift the automatic transmission into neutral. To get practice in this maneuver, she has been slipping the car into neutral while she’s driving. She’ll put it in neutral while traveling at speed, and then let the car slow down a bit, then pop it back into gear and keep going. I know this is a good thing for her to know, but it’s starting to drive me nuts. Is it OK for the transmission? It’s coming close to an argument for us. Can you tell me if what she’s doing is OK? - Mike

Tom: is she doing it five times during every trip to the convenience store? That may be grounds for a domestic dispute.

Ray: but if she’s doing it only occassionally, just forget about it. It’s not going to do any damage to the transmission.

Tom: If it is a very frequent occurence, then you need to appeal to her on both humanitarian and safety grounds.

Ray: On the safety side, you don’t want her to be so focused on unintended acceleration that someday she’ll be practicing her coasting in neutral when she suddenly needs to accelerate to get out of the way of another vehicle.

Tom: Right. You never know what kind of accident you may be involved in, so you don’t want to be so obsessed with one kind that you inadvertently increase the likelihood of another.

Ray: On humanitarian grounds, you’ll just have to tell her that it’s driving you ape-dung. Suggest to her that perhaps her "shift to neutral" practice could safely be reduced to, say, once a month. Good Luck Mike.