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Regular City Council Meeting Monday, November 23, 2009 Page 16 what the collective body would support to get a budget adopted. Mayor Klausing noted that this was the primary and most important thing the City Council was charged with doing annually, to set an annual budget and tax levy. Councilmember Johnson opined that, based on his review of the City Manager's job description, this was the City Manager's job. Councilmember Roe asked Councilmember Johnson if he was referring to the level of spending or where the money was allocated. Councilmember Johnson responded that he was referring to the actual allocation. Councilmember Roe opined that this was a subtle distinction; and suggested that if Councilmember Johnson were to provide his rationale for not supporting the budget as presented, it would allow Councilmember Roe to add that to his thoughts and discussion, and ultimately provide guidance to the City Manager. Mayor Klausing concurred that this was an importance difference, and asked if the City Council was comfortable with the proposed level. Councilmember Pust advised that she was not comfortable with the total level that that the challenge is in how the data was presented and given that the data did not say that 86% of the costs are personnel-related. Councilmember Pust opined that, if a Councilmember was not comfortable with the total spending level and wanted to reduce it, it was not possible to say specific lines, not knowing if it was a frac- tion of a person that would ultimately not save the City any money. Council- member Pust advised that she could come up with cost savings in preventing dol- lars leaving the City; however, questioned if that was realistic; leaving her with an archaic across-the-board reduction. Councilmember Pust further opined that the process had tied the hands of Councilmembers and didn't allow her to come up with sufficient ways to save personnel costs. Mayor Klausing advised that the BFO process was based on staff providing an outline or rough idea of what it cost to provide certain programs and services, and was not a monetary correlation; but that decision-making could be based on rela- tive approximations of various costs. Mr. Miller advised that all of the programs and services had a personnel compo- nent; and that if one program was targeted for elimination, there maybe full-time employees (FTE's) impacted in providing that program or service, requiring it to be finessed. Mr. Miller concurred that the BFO process was a broad picture and that this was understood and anticipated. Mr. Miller suggested that, if there were larger-scale items that the Councilmembers wished to cut, they would look at various programs, and they would involve some level of staffing changes, and re- quire some precision in accomplishing those changes structurally.