Mayor and staffers talk city finance at Chamber lunch.

Folks have had nearly three weeks to digest Mayor Darlene Kordonowy’s preliminary 2008 budget.

Some uneasiness, like that of soccer field proponents who got word their project is slated for funding, has since settled.

Still stirring are questions about how the $55.3 million budget pie is being sliced, and whether the city has the stomach to finish everything on its plate.

“There have been some concerns that the city isn’t delivering,” Kordonowy said to Chamber of Commerce members lunching Wednesday at Wing Point Country Club. “We don’t want that to be the case.”

The 2008 budget, to be honed over the next two months, for now includes $17.5 million in bond funding and $23 million in capital projects. The city on average over the past four years has completed $6.6 million worth of capital work.

City Administrator Mary Jo Briggs, who joined Kordonowy and Finance Director Elray Konkel at the Chamber luncheon, said staff vacancies are down to one following a hiring blitz they said can only help productivity.

The trio also tackled questions about open space, bond money and the impacts of downtown construction on local merchants.

Though it will cost more, the city plans to do as much work as possible at night to mitigate construction impacts on Winslow Way businesses, Kordonowy said of the $20.6 million Streetscape project, set to begin in 2009.

It may also do work on one side of the road at a time. Better parking management also will be key to the effort, she said, because parking problems could discourage shopping downtown.

There is no money in the budget for new open space acquisitions, though $60,000 is budgeted for an island-wide open space study. The city next year plans to ask voters for more bond funding, some of which could go toward open space.

“Within the next year we believe we’ll have some more cash for that,” Kordonowy said.

The city has exhausted $8 million in open space bond funding approved by voters in 2001.

In August, the City Council for the first time ever rejected a proposal by the Open Space Commission for the city to buy parkland. A restructured deal for that property, located on Manzanita Bay, may be considered by the council on Wednesday.

A number of questions have been raised about affordable housing, which would receive $617,890 in total funding under the draft budget.

The Community Housing Coalition, whose work will be phased into the city’s planning department, will continue operation through the first quarter of 2008, after which the transition will begin. In all, $317,890 has been allocated for the shift, including $175,000 for the department’s takeover of the Housing Trust Fund.

More affordable housing staff may be needed later, though that won’t be known until after a full program proposal is presented next year. The city still hasn’t hired an affordable housing developer, which was recommended by a consultant as part of the overall change in the island’s affordable housing landscape.

The extra load on the planning staff, along with a coming multi-year overhaul of the city’s land use code, are why the city plans to hire a deputy planner to assist Planning Director Greg Byrne.

The code changes, Briggs said, are badly needed.

“(Current code) is not only confusing,” she said, “some of it in our view is vindictive.”

Rather than aiding planners, she said some of it reads as a list of things the city shouldn’t let happen.

Konkel so far has processed eight pages of budget questions and staff’s answers to those questions, both of which are posted online at the city’s website.

Some of the questions are actually comments or requests for funding, including one from the Chamber, which is seeking a yearly $30,000 stipend to maintain and staff the visitor kiosk at the ferry terminal.

The City Council last week kicked off budget talks by asking why more information wasn’t readily available in their budget materials.

Staff responded by saying they had streamlined this year’s packet following past complaints about an excess of information.

Budget talks will resume at 5 p.m. Wednesday, prior to the regular council meeting.

Konkel said there will be a few minor corrections, and quite a bit of historical data presented to councilors, but nothing major has changed. Final adoption of the budget is slated for Dec. 12.

“For all the work we do,” Konkel said, “we usually end up within about half a million of where we started.”