JAMESTOWN – Mayor Sam Teresi and his staff are putting the finishing touches on the 2016 city budget, which will be unveiled tomorrow afternoon in city hall.
During an update with the Jamestown City Council two weeks ago, Teresi said the budget would be the most challenging one the city has had to work with since 2001 and 2002.
“In 2001 and 2002, we were working ourselves out of a structural general fund deficit and we were laying off police officers, firefighters, DPW workers, parks workers, development staff, and administrative workers – at the same time seeing historic tax increases two years in a row, until we got the ship righted,” Teresi said.
Teresi said the 2016 budget is facing a more-than $3 million budget gap, primarily due to the rising cost of insurance and employee salaries. He also said that it will be difficult to identify large-scale cuts to the budget because over the years the city has already looked at just about every option that is on the table. He said that because of the state property tax cap and the city approaching its constitutional taxing limit, it’s unlikely they will be able to find the revenue needed to close the gap.
Jamestown city councilman Tony Dolce, who’s the longest serving member of the council and currently chairs the city’s finance committee, said he’s aware of the challenges but wants to see the mayor’s budget presentation before providing specifics on what can be done to close the budget gap.
“They’re all difficult,” Dolce said. “We just roll up our sleeves, go in there and see what we can find and come up with some ideas. Until we actually see the final numbers – I know [the mayor] is still working on that and will be retweaking it right up until the last minute – when we see that then we’ll sit down together, we’ll go over each department with a fine-toothed comb, see where we can make some adjustments and see what the impact is going to be on the tax cap and the constitutional tax limit.”
Teresi will release his executive budget on Wednesday at 4 p.m., with a presentation scheduled for 4 pm in the mayor’s conference room, fourth floor of city hall. That presentation will be open to the public. Once the budget is released, the city council will have until the end of November to finalize and approve it.
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