2017 city budget: Lots of hurdles blocking promises
Williamsport Mayor Gabriel J. Campana is telling residents and taxpayers to plan on no tax increase or a very modest one with the 2017 city budget.
We should hope so.
The 2016 budget carried a 1.89-mill real estate tax increase. That equated to a $189 tax increase for a property owner with a house assessed at $100,000.
That’s an exorbitant hit for the city’s taxpayers that is beyond the means of most of them, especially they also have been hit with almost annual school and county tax increases in recent years.
So we hope the mayor and council are going into the 2017 budget discussions with the attitude that taxes won’t be increased with the spending plan.
We hope money has been saved from budgeted line items to create some carryover breathing room because the city does not have a huge surplus from previous years to produce that wiggle room.
Admittedly, if that has been happening in the first nine months of the year, there hasn’t been much evidence or talk of it.
Promises are one thing.
Reality is another.
And the reality is that the city does not know how much health care costs for employees will increase, but they probably will.
The city does not know whether a new police contract due by Dec. 31 will cost more, but it probably will.
So, we appreciate the attitude, but, like taxpayers, we will take a rational, wait-and-see approach regarding the 2017 city budget.
In our view, the road to a no-tax-increase budget that maintains adequate services for city taxpayers is lined with plenty of hurdles.