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Saving money on gas or items at the grocery store is on everyone’s mind these days.But budget decisions for the city of Springfield center on whether to pay for kid’s soccer or hire 10 more policemen. Springfield City Council had to face these questions Monday night during its meeting.KSMU’s Erika Brame was there and files this report about the 2010 city budget cuts.
City Manager Greg Burris opened Monday night’s council meeting with reports on the 2010 fiscal budget year.
“As you know it has not been easy, it has not been enjoyable to cut 5.7 million dollars out of the FY ’10 budget. That’s in addition to the current years 7 million dollars in cuts,” he said. With such heavy cuts from the general revenue budget the city is reducing its services.The Parks Board will lose half a million dollars in revenue from the city while many non-profits that provide various services on behalf of the city will receive no funding for this budget year.As for the Police and Fire Pension fund, the city will raise its contribution to a little over 52% an increase of about 2% from the previous year.The city will also maintain its hiring freeze which went into effect at the beginning of 2009.This leaves 63 unfilled positions.Burris says that June’s drop in sales tax revenue has only increased the amount of cuts necessary to make a balanced budget.“We were hoping for better news in June, if you’ll remember we had positive news in May, but our revenue was down 10.44% compared to June of 2008,” he said.Other items addressed at Monday night’s meeting were proposals to set up two new Community Improvement Districts, one for the Commercial Street District and another for The Shoppes at James River.Councilman Nicholas Ibarra sponsored the Commercial Street District bill but opposed the bill's final passage.“With this CID I still have two major reservations. And the first is that fact that James Lubber and Eagle Sheet Metal are involved in the boundaries of this and they are going to..I think it’s pretty clear that these two businesses are going to be major revenue sources of this CID. And they are the biggest opponents of this CID,” he said.Both bills passed allowing each district to create its own board and take a community vote for a sales tax increase to improve that district.For KSMU News, I’m Erika Brame.
