City Council approves $83.4 million budget

By a 4-1 vote, the City Council approved an $83.4 million budget for fiscal 2013-14 at Tuesday’s meeting. The spending plan includes a 1.5 percent tax increase.

City Manager Jack Schnirman said that the increase — which would raise taxes by $43, to $2,980 on the average home in the city — was reduced from 2.16 percent, or an average of $64, which was initially proposed at a May 7 budget hearing, after Councilwoman Eileen Goggin and others requested a reduction.

“This [increase] is necessitated because of the continual increase in fixed costs, such as health care, payroll taxes and contractual costs,” Schnirman said. “In short, we look at a situation where even though we have driven our costs down, revenues are also down [and] fixed costs are going up, the same problem that every municipal government is facing.”

The city is required to pass a budget by June 1. Councilman John McLaughlin voted against the spending plan, after his motion requesting that the administration take a week to find additional cost savings was denied.

City officials said in a statement that the budget was reduced from the $85.1 million total for the current fiscal year, which ends on June 30, without cutting essential services, “which are needed now more than ever in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.”

Schnirman said that the city’s work force has been trimmed by 12 percent, to the lowest levels in over a decade, and that labor and personnel costs had been reduced from 83 percent of the budget to 63 percent, “placing the cost structure of government on a more affordable and sustainable trajectory.”

He added that the council urged the administration to stay within the state tax cap of 2.19 percent, and that the budget accomplished that with an increase of just 1.49 percent.

“The worst of the fiscal crisis is over,” Schnirman said. “We stopped the bleeding. Departmental spending was slashed across the board, we reduced overtime … we put in a series of reforms to help streamline city government, we negotiated concessions with our union partners … we put together early-retirement incentives, additional personnel unfortunately were also required and now, for the first time, management employees are paying into their health care costs.”