Washington’s City Council will review options to increase the contingency amounts in its general fund and enterprise funds for the upcoming 2011-2012 fiscal year.

The review is scheduled to occur during the council’s budget session Monday.

During recent meetings, council members have expressed concern about contingency allocations in several of the city’s funds. A document concerning contingency positions spells out ways to increase those contingency allocations.

Those recommendations include increasing the following funds by specific amounts:

• General fund, from $25,540 to $112,946.
• Electric fund, from no amount to $27,940.
• Water fund, from $17,530 to $19,009.
• Sewer fund, from $24,051 to $35,543.
• Stormwater fund, from $2,006 to $2,072.
• Solid-waste fund, from $36,327 to $36,820.

Interim City Manager Pete Connet’s proposed overall budget had a total of $105,454 contingency allocations for those six funds combined. The document to be reviewed by the council increases that amount to $234,330.

The additional revenue for the funds’ contingency balances will be realized by several means, including transferring money between funds and eliminating some items from the proposed budget, but reallocating the revenue for those projects to the contingency components of the six specified funds.

For example, $66,000 that had been earmarked for allocation to the Washington Harbor District Alliance would be rerouted to the electric fund’s contingency balance. The document also indicates rerouting funding initially allocated for economic-development efforts to some of the enterprise funds.

The council also is scheduled to discuss funding for outside agencies, nonprofits and city-supported events such as the Beaufort County Arts Council, Zion Shelter, Wright Flight program and the annual Christmas parade in Washington. The proposed budget allocates $69,350 for those groups and events. That’s about $110,000 less than allocated in the current budget.

That decrease reflects the end of the city’s five-year commitment to provide a $100,000 to the Turnage Theaters Foundation for each of those five years. The foundation has requested another $100,000 allocation be included in the upcoming budget, but Connet’s proposed budget does not recommend making that allocation.

Mayor Pro Tempore Bobby Roberson, in a brief interview Thursday, said he favors an approach to funding outside agencies and nonprofits that sets a limit on how much an entity would receive each year for a set number of years. Once that period is up, the city would no longer fund that entity. Entities seeking city funding would have to demonstrate the money would benefit the city and city residents, Roberson said.

That’s the method the city used to provide funding to the Turnage Theaters Foundation.

With the city facing declining revenues, in part because of the lingering effects of the Great Recession, Roberson said the city must take a close look at requests for funding from nonprofits and outside agencies.

“My recommendation is not to fund at the same levels as in previous years,” Roberson said.

“There probably will be some cuts, I don’t know if we will eliminate any funding,” Roberson said, but he did not rule out that some funding could  be eliminated.

Roberson said he believes the city should provide enough advance notice to nonprofits and outside agencies if it plans to greatly reduce or eliminate the funding they receive from the city.

“If you are not going to do it, you need to tell them in January” so they can plan their budgets accordingly, Roberson said.

The council meets at 5:30 p.m. Monday in the Council Chambers of the Municipal Building, 102 E. Second St.