JAMESTOWN – Jamestown Mayor Sam Teresi will present his executive budget for 2018 one week from Tuesday.
Jamestown Mayor Sam Teresi
On Monday night during the Jamestown City Council work session, Teresi updated the council on the effort of drafting the budget, saying it will be another tough year of trying to make ends meet.
We’re getting closer to a final product and its a major struggle again for 2018, as it has been in years past. It’s all the usual culprits – health insurance and questions marks regarding unsettled contracts,” Teresi said. “Basically we’ve had three bargaining units with three unsettled contracts and accounting for that has been difficult.”
One of the unsettled contracts the mayor mentioned was the contract with the Kendall Club Jamestown Police union. Contract talks with that union have reached an impasse and will now go before an arbitration panel to be settled.
In addition to the issue of rising expenses, the city will also have the added challenge of limited revenue, considering it has all but reached its constitutional taxing limit in the current year’s budget.
Although he hasn’t provided much indication, it’s likely Teresi’s 2018 executive budget will be similar to his 2017 executive budget, when he presented an unbalanced $35 million spending plan, which contained an $875,000 budget gap. That gap was only closed by the city council in November 2017 when it projected an additional $875,000 in state aid. The state eventually came through in April of this year and did provide more aide to help the city, but it’s unlikely that will be something the city can rely on during an annual basis.
Teresi will present his budget at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 10 in the conference room of the mayor’s office, 4th floor of city hall. That presentation will be open to the public.
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