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City Council tabled the proposed 2021 budget Thursday, looking at a meeting in a week to perhaps finalize it.
Before doing so, however, council removed another $434,000 out of Mayor Derek Slaughter’s proposed spending plan, reducing the proposed tax increase in the millage rate to 1 mill.
But council remains unsatisfied, calling on Slaughter to find ways to further reduce his proposed spending plan.
“We made good progress and accomplished a lot, lowering the burden on taxpayers,” Councilwoman Liz Miele said. “I’d like to see us go further.”
Miele said she wants to see more effort from council and the administration to get the size of the tax increase lower for taxpayers.
Council discussed income from Bowman Field naming rights and will be increasing the cable and television franchise fee to add to the balance. It trimmed overtime and compensation time of police and removed the pool operation and equipment expenses as it reviews a plan to repair the pool water leak. It may decide to outsource the departments of recreation and information technology, go digital rather than depend on paper documents as much and it took a look at management and operations of River Valley Transit, the city bus service and Hiawatha Riverboat Paddlewheeler operator.
“We need to find more,” Miele said.
She laid out the prep-work done thus far by council.
“Council has found a little better than $1 million,” she said.
A mill of tax in the city equates to $860,000.
Council reduced the size of the proposed tax increase by 1.5 mills.
Slaughter presented a proposed budget of $29.7 million and called for a 2.5-mill tax increase.
“But need to get it further,” Miele said.
Miele further noted how the departments have stepped up and found places to save money, but as much said they want more contribution and ideas from the administration, specifically the mayor.
“The council has not heard a lot from the top down, administratively, on ways to tighten the belt,” Miele said. “I challenge the administration to find $434,000 between this week and next.”
It was a night when council took out the red pen. It dove into public safety departments, specifically finding ways to cut expenses projected for the bureaus of Police and Fire. With assistance from Damon R. Hagan, city police chief, and Mark Killian, city fire chief, council targeted overtime.
“I understand the need from a public safety perspective, but especially this level of overtime I think we need to do better managing it or push for more mutual aid, maybe state police, South Williamsport and Old Lycoming Township,” Councilman Adam Yoder said.
“Mutual aid is a two-way street and we need to do a better job leveraging that,” Yoder said.
The police budget is about $10.7 million and fire $7.5 million. Yoder addressed each chief asking them to minimize each of those budgets and line items for overtime, and asked for the administration to push to use that strategy to save money while keeping the city safe and not losing service.
Yoder said he wanted to reduce each line item by $30,000. That would be $90,000 taken out of overtime and comp time for police and overtime for fire, he said.
Read more in Saturday’s Williamsport Sun-Gazette.