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Council member probes DOT officials on budget underspending in traffic operations
0:31:40
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127 sec
Council Member Justin Brannan questions DOT officials about underspending in the OTPS traffic operations budget. DOT Executive Deputy Commissioner Paul Ochoa explains the cyclical nature of their work and assures that all funds are eventually spent.
- DOT's spending can be affected by weather and contractor issues
- The agency ensures all allocated funds are spent by the end of the fiscal year
- DOT has flexibility to move money between budget lines to meet operational needs
Justin Brannan
0:31:40
on that.
0:31:42
Okay.
0:31:44
I wanna talk about a couple areas of underspending in DOT's budget.
0:31:48
The FY twenty five budget for OTPS traffic operations is $480,900,000 Over the last two years DOT has spent around $470,000,000 annually in this unit of appropriation.
0:32:01
the third quarter last year, expenditures in this area already exceeded $425,000,000 Yet, through the first three quarters of the current fiscal year, the agency has spent only 347,000,000 on these expenses.
0:32:13
So what have why have expenditures this year lagged last year's expenditures in this particular unit of appropriation?
0:33:04
So the FY twenty six budget for this U of A is over 490,000,000.
0:33:19
you think that's adequate to fund the need in the next fiscal year?
Ydanis Rodriguez
0:32:00
By the end of
0:33:18
And do you do
Paul Ochoa
0:32:22
Yeah, can take it.
0:32:24
You're right councilmember, a lot of our work is cyclical.
0:32:27
Sometimes it can be weather dependent, for example.
0:32:32
We could have an issue with the contractor, for example.
0:32:35
What we do is we do spend our every single cent at the close of the fiscal year.
0:32:41
And if there's work for example that happened in this fiscal year that we didn't pay out, we set up accruals.
0:32:46
It's a technical process where we pay with next fiscal year's dollars to close the gap in this fiscal year.
0:32:53
So it's hard to give you an exact answer of why the money hasn't been spent, but I can assure you it gets spent every single cent gets spent.
0:33:10
That sounds right.
0:33:11
It that U of A includes two large operations.
0:33:14
It's traffic ops and the traffic and planning and traffic planning management division.
0:33:22
We think so.
0:33:22
Listen we do move money around within U of A and sometimes across U of A's to make sure that the entire agency is funded.
0:33:30
But we take a close look at that and we have an amazing budget team who keeps very close track of the spending to make sure that one, the encumbrances that are set up accordingly to pay out contracts.
0:33:41
And if we are over encumbering, which means we are over committing, that we de encumber to move money around.