The Stansbury Park Service Agency approved a $652,028 budget Wednesday that was up 21 percent over the previous year’s budget.

Service agency trustees have said the increase is necessary to keep up with the rising cost of maintenance and repairs.

“The budget for 2009 is a little higher than last year’s because we raised the mill levy in order to do major infrastructure repairs that have needed to be done for 25 years,” said trustee Randy Jones. “With the tax increase, we were also able to pool in more money for different projects.”

Trustee John O’Donnell said despite the revenue increase, making spending allocations was still difficult.

“We don’t have a lot of extra money to spend, so we just don’t spend money on things we don’t absolutely need,” O’Donnell said. “In 2008 we had a lot of small projects and were frugal with how we managed them, but we will have similar challenges for 2009. Work on the golf course and lake will be big priorities next year.”

Major improvement projects will include installation of an automatic sprinkler system, relining golf course ponds, and restoring the deck around the pool.

“We will replace all manual sprinklers, which are getting close to 40 years old, with sprinklers that conserve water and are controlled by a satellite system that turns them off and on,” Jones said. “We will also start redoing the golf course ponds by making them deeper and putting vinyl liners around them to help prevent leaking.”

Another project is the ongoing battle to keep up Stansbury Lake by dying the water to combat algae growth, maintaining water levels and mowing weeds.

Those and other maintenance and repair projects comprise 28 percent of the budget. The lion’s share of expenditures, 45 percent, come from wages, salaries and benefits — many of which are related to maintenance and repair efforts.

On the revenue side, most of the service agency’s operating funds come from general property taxes, which total 76 percent of the entire budget. Only $2,000 is budgeted to be taken in from sales taxes.

“There are hardly any businesses in Stansbury Park, so we don’t need that much money set aside for the sales tax budget,” O’Donnell said. “We do collect sales taxes from our concessions, however.”

O’Donnell expects the increased budget will enable the service agency to make steady progress on its infrastructure upgrades.

“We got an exceptional amount of work done and exceeded our expectations with our budget for 2008,” he said. “Our goal is to do as well in 2009. We also plan to have a good cohesiveness among our board members once again next year.”

Doug Radunich: dougrad@tooeletranscript.com