City Continues To Find Itself In Unsustainable Situation
We hope, one of these years, to hear something different from Mayor Sam Teresi when he unveils his yearly budget proposal.
The story is the same every year. The city is butting up against the state’s constitutional debt limit, a large percentage of the budget pays for employee salaries and benefits, the myriad types of tax exemptions allowed by the state are hurting the city by depressing the city’s tax base and state AIM payments haven’t increased with inflation. The city’s last two budgets have been built and approved with deficits, including $946,679 in the 2018 budget proposed Oct. 10. Any private sector business with the kind of budget the city has compiled the past few years would have filed for bankruptcy a long time ago.
The numbers change. The facts do not, nor will they until the city finds a way to decrease the percentage of the budget spent on salaries and benefits while simultaneously growing the tax base. The city can’t sustain itself for the long-term unless those facts look much different in three or five years than they do right now. City officials have to find ways to cut the cost of government until the revenue catches up. It is difficult to blame the state for revenue sharing payments staying the same when the same state officials come through with $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative programs and at least a one-year increase in state aid that balanced the city budget in 2017.
Projects included in the $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative should begin boosting the tax base over the next several years. That growth will alleviate some of the pain associated with the state’s constitutional tax limit. The long-awaited $1.5 million state Financial Restructuring Board program program that gives retirees the opportunity to pick from one of three new plans or their existing coverage needs to start a downward trend in the cost of city services that includes the way police services are delivered and, ideally, extends out to parks and public works too.
There is no BPU money to balance Jamestown’s budget, nor is there a fund balance that can be relied on each year. We’re not sure how much longer the state will bail the city out, either. Cutting spending and growing the tax base is the only way out of this financial mess.
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