(KAIR)--Atchison city officials came together Thursday night for their third budget workshop, another step in the process of preparing a city budget for 2016.

The first item of discussion concerned funds related to the city's Special alcohol fund. City Finance Director Becky Anderson says that “the city receives funding from the state of Kansas for every alcoholic beverage that is purchased either at a restaurant or a bar within the city limits. Ten percent of that is sent to the state and seventy percent of that comes back to the city, and per state statute, we must spend that money by putting a third of it in our general fund, a third of it in our special parks fund, and a third in our special alcohol fund.”

Anderson adds that other organizations, such as the Atchison Juneteenth Committee, The Guidance Center, and the All Faiths Counseling Center also came to request funds, as well as the Atchison Library, and she says that “the city levies the taxes to the library, but that's as much involvement that we have....when they get the money, they budget it how they chose to budget, and spend it how they chose to spend it. Right now, we have an ordinance that caps that levy at seven mils. So we can't give them any more than seven mils worth of property tax without a change in ordinance.”

Officials discussed city utilities during the second half of the meeting. Anderson says that “right now we are in the process of determining what our costs are going to be in 2016, and of course there is a lot of unknowns when we are budgeting in June and we have another six months before our budget is actually effective. So what we were looking to the Commission for direction on is...here is our operational costs...what we think they are going to be...and here's the capital projects that we think need to be done.”

The next budget workshop is set to take place on July 6th.  

The Atchison city budget has to be presented by August 1st, and adopted by August 15th.