AUBURN -- Auburn city councilors will tweak new budget requirements requiring council approval for certain expenditures so councilors will still have oversight of spending without weighing the meetings down in the minutia of day-to-day city activity.

The council will vote to amend a resolution next week requiring council approval for all travel and training expenses to exclude any travel that doesn't require an overnight stay and will amend a resolution requiring council approval for all purchases exceeding $3,000 to exclude fixed, reoccurring purchases, such as the bi-monthly gas and electric bill voted on Thursday night.

Also, in a new request, councilor Matt Smith asked that the council see all transfers of funds between departments, so that councilors will better be able to track which departments are in deficit situations.

"Instead of quietly running a deficit in some areas, if we're able to see it in council, we can analyze it, we can seek recommendations, and I think we can do this in a much more timely fashion without raiding the fund balance," Smith said. He later said having all inter-department fund transfers come before the council would allow councilors to be better advised about where there are financial problems: "I want to find where the hole is in our budgeting. I want to know what is being transferred and where it's being transferred to."

Read the complete report in Friday's edition of The Citizen.