VIDALIA — Vidalia is looking at another comfortable year financially after the city adopted the budget for 2011-2012 at a special meeting Thursday evening.

The new budget has the city projected at spending $35,122,778 for the upcoming fiscal year, just $654,135 less than was spent the previous year.

City Manager Ken Walker said the budget for the new fiscal year is on par with what it is every year.

“We have had a budget around $35 million for the past couple of years, and that’s what it was again this year,” Walker said.

Walker said the biggest difference in this year’s budget compared to last year’s is money the city will receive from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We put in the budget money we are anticipating to receive from FEMA for flood preparation and clean up costs,” he said. “Other than that, the budget is relatively the same.”

Walker said the majority of Vidalia’s budget goes toward purchasing utilities for the town for a whole fiscal year.

“We have to purchase electricity, gas, sewage, garbage and water, and include all of the costs of the purchase and sale of these items in the budget,” he said. “We have to acquire these utilities, and then turn around and sell them.”

Walker said any city that operates its own utility department like Vidalia has to list all its expenses, and the utility costs for Vidalia in 2011-2012 are projected at $10,375,800, or almost a third of the expenditures.

“This is where a lot of our money in our budget goes,” he said.

Utility costs are also what Walker said provides the city’s greatest area of revenue.

Vidalia’s projected revenue for the new fiscal year is set at $34,874,650, approximately $4 million less than the city made last year.

Walker said the difference in revenue is nothing to worry about, because grants the city has applied for that have yet to be approved are still not on the proposed budget.

“I only add them to the budget when we get approved for them,” he said. “We have applied for a lot of grants, and there is the possibility of millions of dollars being added to the budget.”

The 2010-2011 City of Natchez proposed budget included $27.6 million in expenditures.

Walker said he did not have information readily available on the expenditures of other cities the size of Vidalia, but did say the city strives to manage its money in a way that benefits residents.

“I do believe we provide better services than most towns of our size do,” he said. “We do what we can to make the citizens’ lives better.”