Gainesville City Council members began listening to budget presentations Thursday and heard positive reports from three departments.

Each year, council members ask for a complete report on last year's accomplishments and next year's goals before City Manager Kip Padgett crunches the hard numbers.

Thursday's presenters - the Communications and Tourism office, Community Development Department and Administrative Services - all noted that consolidation and reorganization helped to cut costs this year.

"Being new is what we've tried to focus on, and we used a ton of leftover materials from the old Main Street office, which helped us to save some money this year," said Catiel Felts, director of the communications and tourism office. "Now we have a better idea of what we need to do, and one of our goals is to work more closely with the (Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce) on retail development downtown."

Future goals include a citywide sign program in 2013 to unify welcome signs and streetscape across Gainesville.

"This year, tourism was about starting from the ground floor. We had no visitor's guide or anything that talked about Gainesville and its attractions," Felts said. "We now have a new website dedicated just to tourism ... and way-finding signs across the community could be a very attractive welcome to Gainesville."

The tourism office is also looking to fill a tourism and trade manager position, particularly with connections to the convention industry.

"The performance of the Georgia Mountains Center is disappointing, and the last several years have declined," said council member Bob Hamrick. "Occupancy at 33 percent for the year does not pay expenses. I don't know what magic button to push to get acts over there, but it behooves us to do everything we can to get people over there."

In the Community Development Department, city staff are seeing an increase in building permit requests. The department has already received more in permitting fees this year than in 2010, department director Rusty Ligon said.

"I'm not sure why the fees have jumped up while zoning requests remain low, but my theory is that we're not seeing as much speculative zoning," he said. "People are waiting until they have financing in place and tenants signing the bottom line before coming in to rezone property, as opposed to the past, when developers would get zoning out of the way first."

The Community Development Department will focus on the comprehensive plan this year, which will set a 20-year vision for the city's planning needs. Ligon hopes to investigate the way Gainesville collects building fees, which hasn't been updated since 1996.

The Administrative Services Department is also investigating fees by wrapping up audits of the city's alcohol beverage tax and hotel/motel tax.

"This was to encourage compliance and make sure we're collecting what we need," said Melody Marlowe, the city's finance director. "We need to continue to do this program every three to five years to let people know we're watching."

According to the audits, the city collected $44,000 in missing alcohol beverage fees and about $1,100 in uncollected hotel/motel taxes.

"This year we're reviewing every fee collected by our offices and throughout the city to ensure they are equitable," Marlowe said. "We're also evaluating employee benefits to strike that balance between what is financially stable and what supports our strong work force."