The Bonney Lake City Council Dec. 14 unanimously passed the city’s 2011-12 biennial budget, including $2.6 million in spending allocations proposed by the mayor.

Aside from the proposed spending package, Mayor Neil Johnson called the budget plan a “status quo” budget.

“This budget reflects the economy. We’ve just got to maintain,” Johnson said. “There’s not a lot of new things we can do.”

There were a handful of changes in the final budget, including the correction of a mistake that dropped the overall spending approximately $3 million from initial estimates.

According to Finance Director Al Juarez, city officials detected a worksheet formula error in the city’s stormwater fund that added approximately $2.77 million to the expenditures.

The stormwater fund is an enterprise fund that pays for itself and the error did not affect the rest of the budget, including the general fund.

The fix lowers the overall expenditures for the next two years to $91.4 million, split into approximately $53.5 million in 2011 and $37.9 million in 2012.

General fund spending in 2011 is set at almost $15.7 million and $13.5 million in 2012.

Aside from the accounting error, the final budget contained two additional changes, including the relocation of $1 million funding in the “general government capital improvement fund” from 2012 to 2011.

The money is part of the mayor’s spending proposal, which allocates money from the city’s fund balance to priorities like parks, a civic center or YMCA and additional money for downtown improvements.

Johnson called the spending “an investment in the future.”

Councilmembers and administration were quick to point out that just because the money is allocated does not mean it will be spent.

“There’s obviously further action that will be required to spend those monies,” Deputy Mayor Dan Swatman said, adding that he thought the spending was “very appropriate.”

Officials also were clear that though these funds would come from the city’s general fund balance, the balance would remain healthy.

Even if the entire amount of allocated money was spent, the general fund balance would remain at more than $2.6 million, or roughly 21 percent of the city’s general fund, well above the recommended 8 percent.

Earlier this year at a budget retreat, the council expressed to the mayor its desire to spend down some of the fund balance, but at the same time, to formulate budgets in which expenditures are kept as close to revenues as possible.

The 2011-12 budget includes using slightly less than $400,000 from the fund balance to cover general fund expenditures.

Swatman said he was pleased the mayor listened to council input and kept the use of fund balance at a reasonable level.

Another late addition to the budget was $50,000 toward the purchase of new undercover cars for the police department.

The decision to add the cars to the budget came after a discussion at the Dec.7 council workshop. The council decided to buy new cars because it is cheaper than continuing the lease on the current vehicles or paying the detectives to use their own vehicles.

According to Juarez, the city will be able to purchase all three vehicles for a total of $56,000, though none of the vehicles will be outfitted for police work, but simply used as undercover cars.

“It makes better sense,” Johnson said.

The budget does not factor in any expansion due to a potential annexation in 2012, but officials said if the annexation vote, expected early in 2011, passes budget amendments would be passed to increase city services to include the new areas.

Overall, the council seemed pleased with the spending plan.

“I think it will be a very good budget for a start,” Swatman said.