We had the forecast meeting on Wednesday and yep, it’s as bad as everyone thought…:)  As it stands right now, we have a $3.2 million hole in the City budget (which is roughly $50 million) due to a contraction in just about every tax that the City or State collects.  How we deal with this remains somewhat unclear.  For my part, I’m not convinced that things are as bad as they might get.  Bad?  Yes.  Catastrophic, No. So I’m not convinced that the time is nigh to draw heavily on the rainy day fund.  However, there are only 3 places the City can get money to balance the budget: budget cuts, taxpayers or the rainy day fund.

As with most things, it is going to require a compromise utilizing all 3. The City Manager has made some immediate budget cuts that will save around $1 million and instituted a hiring freeze.  The Council will meet several times over the next week or so to determine a direction.

It’s going to be a difficult fall.

The Finance committee will be meeting tomorrow night at about 6:00 and the 3rd agenda item is the forcast for the coming year.  In short, I expect it to be unpleasant.  The trends of the larger economy effect us right here in river city.  I’d look for a lot of turmoil at City hall shortly and a nearly flat budget in the coming year but all of that is subject to change depending on how dire the situation gets.  I would like to maintain everything we have going but I’m terribly worried about this year and next so we will see what happens….

If you want to stop by, we’d be happy to see you on the 2nd floor of City hall tomorrow night.