A meeting to discuss the 2003-2004 Ames budget was held Tuesday night.

Ames City Manager Steve Schainker spoke to a crowd of about fifteen detailing how the city budget is distributed.

He said the city is still in the preliminary stages of putting together the new budget. In September the city began its preparation of amending the 2002/2003 and proposed 2003-2004 budgets.

Ames Mayor Ted Tedesco said Tuesday’s meeting was the first of a series of meetings Ames residents, including students, are welcome to attend and voice their opinions about the budget progress.

“The whole budget process is a long, drawn-out affair that most people do not understand,” Tedesco said.

City officials try to make the meetings as open as possible so those who want to be there and want to understand the budget process are able to, he said.

The 2003-2004 budget will be unveiled Jan. 31, 2003, Schainker said. By March the city will hold its last budget hearing and adopt the final budget.

Duane Pitcher, director of finance for the city, spoke about the current budget and how the money is being distributed. The majority of the budget is spent on services and utilities including streets and traffic expenses, police and fire protection.

Pitcher also stressed how important local-option sales taxes are. He said 60 percent of each dollar earned from local-option sales taxes goes toward tax relief.

The money goes directly toward the city budget, which then decreases the amount of money that must be collected through taxes.

The other 40 percent of the local-option sales tax goes toward community betterment, he said.

Expenditures like trees and plants for the downtown district are included in community betterment.

Schainker said Ames has the lowest tax levy of all major cities in Iowa. The majority of cities have a tax levy of $8.10, whereas Ames has a levy of $5.03, he said.

At the end of the presentation audience members were welcomed to make comments and suggestions about next year’s budget.

Mikie Walker, of Ames, spoke about a problem with the Duff Avenue and Airport Road intersection.

She proposed the city spend money on researching the intersection and the possibility of preventing the number of car accidents that occur there.

One idea was to encourage bus use by students who use the intersection to get to campus from apartments on Billy Sunday Road. However, Walker said she had spoken with an employee of the Department of Transportation who told her buses are not a feasible solution to the problem because the area is “geometrically challenged.”

A small group of Ames High School students also spoke in favor of passing the local-option sales tax.