JAMESTOWN – The Jamestown City Council will begin the process of reviewing the 2016 budget when it meets Monday night in city hall.
City officials will hold budget deliberations starting at 6:30 p.m., when they’ll begin discussion on the mayor’s $35.1 million spending plan, which contains a tax rate increase of 5.6 percent.
Earlier this month, Jamestown Mayor Sam Teresi released his budget, saying that a combination of factors – including mandatory increases in salaries and benefits, combined with little-to-no increase from various revenue sources – resulted in the budget calling for tax hike that goes well over the state mandated tax cap.
During WRFA’s recent Community Matters program, Teresi pointed out that since he took office in 2000, the city has conducted more than 70 different cost-cutting measures, saving over $5 million. He said unfortunately, that means there is little to no options remaining on the table to find cost savings for next year.
“A lot of those 76 items – which, incidentally, acumulatively save us $5.6 million a year on a recurring basis – were huge. They had a big impact and they helped to dig us out of a hole, but they are no longer available to us,” Teresi said.
Some taxpayers have suggested that the city cut its workforce in order to find savings that would be large enough to cut budget spending, but Teresi said that the city has already cut staffing as much as possible.
“Unfortunately in our four largest departments, through either contracts that were previously negotiated generations in the past orb by court decisions ore arbitrator decision that have been imposed on us, we are at basically minimums staffing agreement levels in the parks department, public works department, police department and the fire department. And those departments constitute about 80 percent or more of the budget.”
Another factor for the 2016 proposed city budget is that the proposed tax increase brings the city to 99.9 percent of its constitutional taxing limit, meaning that state law prevents the city from raising taxes any higher in 2017 and beyond, even if it wanted to.
The city council’s budget deliberations will begin at 6:30 p.m. Monday night in mayor’s conference room on the 4th floor of city hall and is open to the public.
Line by line copies of the budget can also be reviewed in city hall at the mayor’s office, city finance office, or at the Prendergast Library.
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