West Lake Hills Mayor Dave Claunch presented a draft budget at last week’s budget meeting that included a $340,000 deficit to come out of reserves for remodeling City Hall.

To balance the remaining budget, based on a .0534 per $100 valuation tax rate and a projected 15 percent drop in sales tax, the city proposed cutting several items including a new Web site, two new police vehicles, and half of the original $70,000 budget for new signs to match the one at Red Bud Trail and Westlake Drive.

Police Chief Cliff Spratlan made a presentation at the meeting acquiescing the purchase of two new police cars but beseeching the council to approve the requested raises for his two senior most officers.

“It is a pay parody issue,” Mayor Dave Claunch said. “The chief created a pay matrix based on the rank and number of years officers have worked. Based on the amount of time Lt. Larry Vann and Sgt. Neil Hill have been here, that salary point is about $5,000-$6,000 higher than their current salary. Last year, we made the decision to take them halfway there. The chief would like us to make the decision to take them all the way there.”

Spratlan said that the two officers were happy with their pay increase from last year and pointed out that they were not in the room arguing for the raise, he was.

“I’m trying to get them online with the rest of the world,” he said.

The police chief also made a brief presentation, at the request of Councilman Spencer Stevens to explain why the city continues to operate its own dispatch system instead of farming it out to Travis County, which could save up to $200,000 per year.

“It facilitates a faster response,” he said. “It makes us capable of having 2-3 minute response times. We have 1 percent crime rate. They have call takers and those call takers line them up in an order of importance. If their dispatcher gets us five or six more important calls for their officers to do, they aren’t dispatching us until they do that.”

All final budget decisions will be made at the regularly scheduled city council meeting Sept. 23.