City employees were projected to receive $3.9 million in benefits for this fiscal year, which makes up 56.9 percent of the city’s salary expenses, and the city of Lincoln’s General Fund has an accumulated deficit of $6.1 million.

That’s according to a set of 15 questions in a Lincoln Tea Party Patriots memorandum sent to Lincoln City Council.

The questions raised by the Lincoln Tea Party Patriots are derived mainly from the city’s 2009-2010 budget.

The internal services fund jumped from an estimated $4 million in revenue 2008-2009, to $7.9 million in 2009-2010. The expenditures for the fund include salaries, benefits and professional services.

The salaries rose from an estimated $1.9 million in 2008-2009 to $3.14 million in 2009-2010, and benefits increased from an estimated $990,412 in 2008-2009 to $1.6 million the next year.

This was in spite of massive city job cuts and pay cuts last year.

Professional services, also listed in the internal services fund, increased from an estimated $292,413 in 2008-2009 to $1.7 million the next year.

All the money in the internal services fund had been transferred in “from other fund sources,” according to the 2009-2010 budget report.

The News Messenger asked City Manager Jim Estep and Chief Financial Officer Anna Jatczak on Monday what the internal services fund is and where the money was transferred from.

Estep and Jatczak would not say, on Monday, where the money had been transferred from but they promised to give that information to The News Messenger on Tuesday. When called Tuesday morning, Estep was not available and he did not return the call that day.

“It’s like overhead. There are indirect costs associated with all programs, and it takes all of the indirect costs and puts them in one fund so they can be distributed,” Estep said on Monday.

Some examples of indirect costs he gave were human resources, information technology and finance.

The News Messenger asked Estep why there had been such a jump in the numbers for the fund, including the salaries, benefits and professional services. He answered, “because it’s a new fund” and “the city was probably bringing things in to the fund that we didn’t have in there before.”

He clarified the last paragraph on Wednesday by saying, “it was an existing fund that only had IT services and fleet.”

Estep said that the money for the internal services fund “came from transferring the costs of support services to the internal services fund that were formerly shown as directs costs to the general fund.”

The News Messenger also wanted to know what the money for a professional consultant was used for and Estep said it “would most likely had been financial consultant costs.”

“He (Joe Aguilar) left when Anna came but his firm is still helping with audits,” Estep said.

Aguilar’s firm is Vavrinek, Trine, Day and Company (VTD).

When asked if the professional consultant would still be used since Jatczak is now on staff, Jatczak said there would be an amendment during the March 9 City Council meeting to use Aguilar’s services for “12 days spread from now until October,” which she said includes “VTD staff time to discuss audit findings.”

“We are resolving audit findings for the last three years for areas for improvement,” Jatczak said.

What the Lincoln Tea Party Patriots wants

The memo distributed by the Lincoln Tea Party Patriots to City Council, the Lincoln Area Chamber of Commerce and some residents states that Tea Party supporters “want our government to be thoughtful, responsible and respectful of our needs.”

The memo was signed by 20 community members.

TEA is an acronym for “Taxed Enough Already.”

“The fact is that after reviewing the budget, there are some areas we feel need to be discussed and we’re asking the City Council to agendize a formal discussion,” said Claire Magid, coordinator for the Lincoln Tea Party Patriots, on Monday. “Salaries and benefits makes up the largest portion of the city’s budget, and there are questions concerning where funding comes from.”

Magid, along with 35 other Lincoln Tea Party Patriots, attended Tuesday’s City Council meeting, asking the City Council to “agendize the 15 questions.”

“They could have said no,” Magid said when asked how she felt about the city’s response to the Tea Party’s request. “I’m very pleased that they are open for community involvement.”

The Tea Party group asked city officials and City Council to answer their questions during the March 23 meeting.

Estep told The News Messenger on Wednesday that the questions “will be agendized but we need to talk about how it will be agendized.”

He said there are two ways the answers could be agendized, either as a presentation or a staff report.

During Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Mayor Tom Cosgrove said that he “appreciated the time given by the group to put responses together.”

“Regarding the questions, first of all, thank you, time was obviously spent looking at the budget,” Cosgrove said. “We will try to have responses by the 23rd. Some of them may take a little bit longer to do.”

James Macauley, a financial management consultant, developed the questions for the Lincoln Tea Party Patriots.

“The reason for the publication (of the questions) is to get a lot of people involved in a discussion, because at the end of the day, it’s about their money and how it is spent by the city,” Macauley said.

Macauley told The News Messenger he was asked to look at the “city’s budget situation” by Magid after he attended the last Lincoln Tea Party Patriots meeting.

“The following evening, I pulled up the budget and looked at it for about 20 minutes,” Macauley said. “I woke up at 4:30 a.m. (the next morning) with questions and wrote them down. It took about six hours to research and look at the numbers.”

Macauley, said the questions are meant to be “highly readable so people could understand the questions and the significance of the questions.”

“The community should reserve judgment until they have a better understanding of the facts,” Macauley said. “The 15 questions are formulated to help them understand what the facts are.”

Magid said she would like the questions to be answered in order to give them the information they need to “choose how to be involved.”

“An informed public is a better voting public that will make better decisions,” Magid said. “The people are the ones who support the city government and they have a right to know where their money is going.”