The 2013 fiscal year began Oct. 1, but officials in Buda, Kyle, San Marcos and Hays County began work on their new municipal budgets months ago.

Each entity spent at least six months—nine months in the case of San Marcos—holding public forums, workshops and retreats to gather input from residents and staff.

Key among the decisions made by staff are whether to increase property taxes and utility rates, whether to include a cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for employees and which personnel and equipment requests to fill for each department.

Cities and counties are required by state law to pass a balanced budget before the start of each fiscal year.

Buda—$16.59 million

City Manager Kenneth Williams said City Council and staff focused on three issues during this year's budget creation process—infrastructure, public saftey, and employees and their benefits.

"We focused a lot on our capital improvement program—the sewer projects, water projects and streets," Williams said.

The single most expensive item on the budget is the completion of the Garlic Creek force main, a wastewater project that was held over from the previous fiscal year and will cost Buda $1.5 million.

To address public safety, the city added four full-time police officers to its department.

"The reason we hired the additional officers and equipped them, [and] put them on the street was to provide better 24-hour coverage to the city," he said.

To hire, train and equip the new officers will cost the city $330,000.

The city also surveyed employees and compared Buda's benefits and salaries to those of 24 cities in the area.

"We found out we'd fallen behind on salaries and retaining employees so we adjusted positions, and then we did a basic 3 percent pay increase," he said. "We weren't far behind, but it was enough to consider making adjustments because we're in such a competitive environment here with Austin, Kyle [and] San Marcos."

Finance Director Sidonna Foust said the final budget is the result of the entire city staff's involvement.

"I think what makes it most interesting is it's not just your department heads that are putting your budget together, it's the total involvement of the entire city, from every [administrator], [to] the guys out on the street," she said. "Everyone has input to reach this final number."

Kyle—$42.2 million

Kyle City Council's directives to staff during the budget process were to cut no services or jobs, to maintain city services and to minimize effects on ratepayers and taxpayers.

In the second year of a three-year plan to stabilize the city's water utility, those ratepayers will see a 20 percent increase.

Communication Director Jerry Hendrix said the increases are necessary after a decade of not raising rates.

"During that period of time, we did a lot of infrastructure improvements, [and] we expanded the wastewater treatment plant. All that was paid out of savings, and there's no associated rate increases to cover it, just the increased cost of operating," Hendrix said. "So our rate increases are programmed to make that utility whole again, to make it stable. Even with those rate increases, our rates are still very competitive."

Finance Director Perwez Moheet said the city needs to expand its wastewater plant to accommodate the rising population.

The most expensive item on the Kyle budget—at slightly more than $5 million—is the extension of wastewater services south to Yarrington Road.

The budget also includes a 3.5 percent COLA for city employees.

"[Employees] hadn't seen a raise in quite some time," Moheet said. "Not only are we behind in COLA, we're also behind in competitive pay. So your base is low, and then when you don't give them any COLA adjustments, their economic buying power [decreases] every year. The focus was to invest in the workforce."

Kyle held 20 public hearings and workshops during the budget process and saw high levels of citizen participation. Moheet said another positive aspect was City Council's involvement.

"They took the time to go over line items by department. They were very engaged in water and sewer rates," he said. "They were full-on from the get-go."

San Marcos—$160.8 million

When San Marcos officials held a visioning session in January 2011, they established sound finances as one of City Council's goals to help make the city sustainable.

Finance Director Steve Parker said the city is beginning to see the payoff of that focus.

"We've really started to capture and see results of the plan a lot sooner than expected with the council goals," Parker said. "Our big issue was that we just kept adding on debt and doing all these big projects, but we weren't keeping up and didn't have the resources to keep up with all the new parks and streets and maintaining them. It was this snowball effect.

"It was just going to get worse. We were issuing this debt, so more of our property taxes were going to debt because the city wasn't growing," he said.

Officials chose not to increase property taxes this year, but more revenue from sales taxes and higher property valuation—which results in more revenue from property taxes—have helped the city see results sooner than anticipated, he said. The city will add 10.5 new positions this fiscal year.

"We were able to get all this new personnel because our sales taxes are up, our property tax valuations are up," he said. "We've reduced our overall debt significantly, by almost $10 million in the last two years."

Parker said the process of achieving sustainability is a long one.

"Three years ago, 62 cents of every property tax dollar was going to pay for debt; now it's 50 cents. You can see all the construction going on—all these things have come to fruition," he said. "This is a battleship, and it's going to take a while to turn, [but] I think we're starting to see the benefits."

Hays County—$174.5 million

A county's budget is vastly different from a city budget, primarily in its revenue streams, but also in its complexity and scope.

Budget Manager Vickie Wilhelm said Hays County officials and department heads worked to create a budget that maintained the county's tax rate and services to residents.

"This [Commissioners] Court has been very committed to being fiscally responsible, holding the line on the tax rate increases and maintaining the level of service that our residents are used to," Wilhelm said.

Commissioners adopted a tax rate of $0.4690 per $100 of valuation, down slightly from the fiscal year 2012 tax rate of $0.4691. This will mean a decrease of 81 cents on the property tax bill of the average homeowner.

The largest portion of the county's budget—46.2 percent—funds voter-approved parks and road construction projects such as the FM 150 realignment in Kyle.

Both projects are funded as part of a pass-through financing agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation. The county incurs the cost and is reimbursed by the state.

"There's quite a bit of road projects. Those are huge and expensive, but TxDOT's ahead of schedule in paying us," she said.

The budget includes a 3 percent merit pool available for employee raises but no overall cost of living raise. Employees shared a 2 percent merit pool in 2011 but have not received a COLA since 2008.

Certified peace officers who are part of collective bargaining will see a 2 percent raise.

Elected officials will receive a 3 percent raise, the first since 2009. The total cost for the increase will be $37,681 if they all choose to accept the raise.