At the Municipal Research and Services Center’s blog, Stan Finkelstein offers some useful budgeting advice for local governments. He notes,

Many local officials have incorporated into their 2017 budgets the filling of new positions, expansion or growth of services, and the incurring of new debt to be serviced by General Fund/Current Expense revenues.

But local governments should take care to be fiscally prudent, Finkelstein argues. Among his suggestions: use nonrecurring revenues for nonrecurring expenditures, have reserves equal to six to eight weeks of operating expenses, and understand the elements of the government’s revenue structure. For example,

Local officials must recognize the vulnerability of certain revenues to declines in economic activity and set resources aside to compensate. Is your jurisdiction overly dependent on intergovernmental revenues that may be uncertain in the future?

Additionally, Finkelstein urges local governments to monitor their labor force and make sure any hiring is sustainable in a potential downturn. According to Finkelstein, “For the average local government, labor costs average approximately 70% of total costs.” (As a comparison, state spending on employee wages and benefits was 21.8 percent of total state spending in the 2013–15 biennium.)

Note, then, this Columbia Basin Herald article about how the statewide minimum wage increase will affect the budget of the City of Moses Lake:

“Just in the first year implementation with running the pool (Surf ‘n Slide Water Park) and other part-time operations we run through Parks and Recreation, that (Initiative 1433) increased our budget overnight by over $50,000 for next year,” stated City Manager John Williams at a recent council meeting. “And there is a phasing of that so it will continue to affect our budget until 2020.” . . .

“We have made some significant concessions and withdrawals from the (2017) budget and are still trying to maintain both those priorities that the council has said, as well as core services that we need to provide for our citizens,” Williams said.

The Moses Lake general fund budget is about $23 million a year.

Meanwhile, Governing Magazine has a piece on how local governments create their budgets:

Small towns and districts know all too well about limited resources. Their departments are made up of just a few employees; they have almost no support staff; and they can't afford fancy software that might help speed things along.

For finance directors, this makes budgeting a difficult and time-consuming task. In most less-populated places, the process is stuck in the 20th century: Budgets are created on Microsoft Excel, and directors are expected to consolidate versions between different departments.

At best, it’s arduous work. At worst, it leaves a lot of opportunities for errors.

A company called OpenGov is offering a product “that does for government budgets what TurboTax does for individual tax filers.” According to OpenGov, at least one government in Washington is using the product—Washougal.