FAIRHOPE, Ala. — The City Council is expected to adopt a budget for the upcoming fiscal year at it’s Monday meeting.

The proposed budget for fiscal year 2009-2010, which begins Oct. 1, has been the product of budget meetings conducted in August and September by the Financial Advisory Committee, a group appointed by the council, which includes all council members and Mayor Tim Kant.

Chuck Zunk, the FAC chairman, will make a budget presentation at the Monday meeting, according to the Sept. 28 council agenda.

“No matter what we do here, the council always has the prerogative to make changes (before it adopts the budget),” Zunk said Tuesday, when the committee met for about an hour.

After the budget presentation and discussion by the council, the budget is expected to be formally adopted by the council in the form of a resolution.

The FAC’s budget review process that produced the proposed budget was an innovation for the city in how the budget was prepared, with the group holding more than 12 hours of budget hearings at its first two days of meetings in August, when department heads presented their respective budgets.

In the past, the mayor or his staff would present the budget it prepared to the committee a few weeks before its adoption without meetings or committee work, other than at a possible work session on the same day of the meeting when the council would adopt it, according to city officials and staff familiar with the process during recent years. In years past, according to some city staff, department heads themselves had little input into their department’s budgets, which were prepared by the mayor’s office.

This year there was input from most department heads, based on their appearances and statements at the FAC meetings and the documents presented. Sometimes those budget requests of the department heads differed significantly from the ultimate budget recommended by the mayor, such as in the case of the police department’s budget.

But, in the end, it was the FAC that reviewed the budgets submitted by the department heads and the mayor and came to its own proposed budget document, which is what will be presented to the council Monday night.

That proposed budget document itself looks different than in years past, with columns indicating any differences between the administration’s proposed budget and the FAC’s proposed budget.

Another budget-related resolution on Monday’s council agenda, would require, if passed by the council “that all anticipated or requested expenditures for capital purchases, matching funds for grants, land purchases, donations, community development projects, increases in debt, or expenditures not included in the city’s current fiscal year budget be submitted to the Financial Advisory Committee for analysis and recommendation(s) before being submitted to the City Council.”

Earlier this month, the city made an offer to purchase approximately 40 acres of land for additional recreational ball fields to be managed by the city’s recreation department. Councilman Mike Ford, who has a real estate company and is the council’s liaison on the rec board, has been negotiating the purchase on the council’s behalf, and made a verbal offer on the property about two weeks ago.

Ford and Kant were appointed by the council to negotiate the purchase of the land at a council meeting earlier this year.

The possible funding sources for the purchase include bond funds, impact fees and a capital fund account, all restricted for use by the rec department, according to the city treasurer’s office.

City Treasurer Nancy Wilson said last week that her office had not been contacted by either Ford or Kant regarding the financing options for the possible land purchase.

“Those who think everything is in good shape, well it isn’t quite so,” said FAC member Stan Grubin at Tuesday’s meeting, referring to comments made by some citizens to rescind the sales tax passed this year arguing that the city is in good financial shape, despite earlier claims by others that it was not, leading to the adoption of the city’s first municipal sales tax in its history.

“There is a lot of work that needs to be done (on the city’s infrastructure, for example),” said Grubin, referring to recommendations for priority projects identified by the city’s Strategic Planning Steering Committee.

Councilman Lonnie Mixon, chair of the council’s finance committee and a leader on the FAC, said that sales tax revenues and other financial steps taken by the city this year will put “almost $ 2 million in reserves.”

He said those efforts and the sales tax revenue stream have also been able to help limit transfers from the city’s public utilities to the general fund.

“Next year we’ll be able to make much larger steps,” said Mixon, referring to other plans the FAC has for bringing accountability and transparency to the budget process, setting aside additional reserve fund amounts, and addressing longer-term strategic and financial issues facing the city.

The FAC decided Tuesday to have regular meetings to occur prior to council meetings on the fourth Monday of each month, when it could address matters brought before it as required by the resolution set for adoption Monday night and other work it has planned, such as simplifying the presentation of financial reports and documents.