Mayor Bell’s plan puts 2013 budget at $609M

Shifting required to balance books

Toledo Mayor Michael P. Bell speaks at a press conference at One Government Center about the proposed 2013 operating budget.

The Blade/Amy E. Voigt
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Toledo Mayor Michael P. Bell speaks at a press conference at One Government Center about the proposed 2013 operating budget.

Mayor Mike Bell on Mon­day re­leased his pro­posed 2013 gen­eral fund bud­get — a spend­ing plan that again forces the city to take mil­lions out of the cap­i­tal im­prove­ment bud­get to keep Toledo’s books bal­anced.

Spend­ing across all of the city’s funds next year will to­tal $609 mil­lion. The pro­posed gen­eral fund bud­get pre­dicts $243.59 mil­lion in spend­ing and an equal amount in rev­e­nues — up from the $238.98 mil­lion in rev­e­nues and the $238.9 mil­lion in spend­ing in the 2012 bud­get.

Mayor Bell said the 2013 bud­get is a far bet­ter out­look than the city had when he first took of­fice in Jan­u­ary, 2010. At that point, he was con­sid­er­ing po­lice of­fi­cer and fire­fighter lay­offs along with deep cuts to other city ser­vices to keep the books bal­anced.

The mayor called it “al­most a lit­tle bit of a mir­a­cle” that the city was able to main­tain its ser­vices with­out rais­ing taxes.

“The bud­get that we are pre­sent­ing to­day presents a much more dif­fer­ent pic­ture,” he said. “Although it’s not glam­or­ous, it does rep­resent that Toledo is re­cov­er­ing on a steady path in this eco­nomic re­cov­ery mood that we are in.”

“We still, though, do face chal­lenges,” he said. “Between 2011 and 2013 we’ll lose ap­prox­i­mately $14.7 mil­lion from lo­cal gov­ern­ment funds, which is nor­mally pro­vided from the state.”

The Bell ad­min­is­tra­tion said it will keep the city in the black by tak­ing $13.96 mil­lion from the cap­i­tal im­prove­ments bud­get, which is more than the $11 mil­lion it took from that fund this year. Even with the in­creased raid­ing of that fund, city of­fi­cials plan to pave more streets than dur­ing any of the last three years.

The 2013 CIP bud­get, when it’s re­leased in Decem­ber, will have $32 mil­lion for more than 50 miles of streets to be re­paved and re­con­structed, with money left over to ren­o­vate Fire Sta­tion No. 3 and build a new Fire Sta­tion No. 12, the mayor said.

“The great­est de­bate we have now isn’t whether we will be add­ing po­lice and fire, but where will we be put­ting the fire sta­tion,” he said. 

“I can tell you that three years ago, the is­sue would have been can we even af­ford to have the fire­fight­ers in the sta­tion.”

The Toledo Fire and Rescue chief, Luis Santiago, left, and Toledo Police Chief Derrick Diggs, right, attend the announcement for the proposed 2013 operating budget at One Government Center.

Dep­uty Mayor Steve Her­wat said the city will be able to pave more streets be­cause the en­gi­neer­ing ser­vices di­vi­sion has been ag­gres­sively pur­su­ing fed­eral and state grants for street re­pair.

City Finance Direc­tor Patrick McLean pre­dicted 3.4 per­cent growth in the city’s in­come tax. The city’s 2.25 per­cent in­come tax, which is linked to em­ploy­ment, is the larg­est source of rev­e­nue for the city.

Mr. McLean es­ti­mated the city will col­lect $163.87 mil­lion from in­comes taxes in 2013, up from the $158 mil­lion or $159 mil­lion ex­pected to be col­lected by the end of 2012.

Other rev­e­nues the city plans to col­lect next year in­clude $10.8 mil­lion from prop­erty taxes; $20.45 mil­lion from “charges for ser­vices”; $6 mil­lion from li­censes and per­mits; $7 mil­lion from fines and for­fei­tures, and $27.16 mil­lion from all other rev­e­nues, which in­cludes op­er­at­ing trans­fers, sales of as­sets, and ca­sino rev­e­nue.

“The spend­ing pri­or­i­ties are very clear to us this year,” he said. “First of all, pub­lic safety. In this bud­get there are dol­lars for a po­lice class as well as a fire class and as we ex­am­ine our rev­e­nues early in the new year and with the close out of 2012, we will make some de­ter­mi­na­tions early in the year whether or not we can even add to the size of that po­lice class.”

Mr. McLean said the in­creases in spend­ing next year comes chiefly from more ex­pen­sive base sal­a­ries and wages — which in­creases from $92.69 mil­lion to $97.53 mil­lion. That is a 5.21 per­cent in­crease.

There is also a 9.12 per­cent in­crease in em­ploy­ment taxes and med­i­cal costs for the city from $23.76 mil­lion to more than $25.9 mil­lion next year.

Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Joe McNamara said the bud­get was as he ex­pected.

“It does not ap­pear there are any sur­prises, in that we were ex­pect­ing it to be bal­anced through bor­row­ing both from the bond mar­ket and in­ter­nally from the CIP bud­get to pay for op­er­a­tions,” Mr. McNamara said.

The pro­posed bud­get also:

• In­creases the mayor’s of­fice bud­get from $728,240 to $827,449 spent out of the gen­eral fund.

• Cuts the bud­get for city coun­cil and city au­di­tor from $1.445 mil­lion to $1.426 mil­lion.

• Adds $210,000 to the city’s rainy day fund. That fund cur­rently has $326,000, which is less than a day’s worth of gen­eral fund op­er­at­ing ex­pen­di­tures at the end of 2011.

Mr. Bell said the 2013 pro­posed bud­get con­tin­ues a com­mit­ment to pub­lic safety with ad­di­tional po­lice and fire classes.

The po­lice and fire de­part­ments are the larg­est ex­penses for Toledo tax­pay­ers — swal­low­ing up 67.29 per­cent of the gen­eral fund. Po­lice will cost $75.3 mil­lion from the gen­eral fund, up from $73.6 mil­lion last year. The po­lice de­part­ment will cost a to­tal of $78.34 mil­lion across all city funds. 

Fire will cost $61.7 mil­lion from the gen­eral fund, up from $60.4 mil­lion last year. Its to­tal cost is $62.89 mil­lion.

The po­lice de­part­ment cur­rently has a class in the acad­emy and will of­fer a po­lice of­fi­cer civil ser­vice exam on Dec. 1. The exam will give the city a new list of can­di­dates, at least 45 of whom will be se­lected to be­gin train­ing in 2013. The fire de­part­ment be­gins train­ing 30 new re­cruits on Dec. 3 who will to be­gin work­ing in 2013. The 2013 po­lice and fire classes will not be­gin un­til cur­rent classes have com­pleted their acad­emy train­ing.

The Toledo Munic­i­pal Court will also cost tax­pay­ers more in 2013 — $14.1 mil­lion, up from $13.55 mil­lion last year.

The cost for pub­lic util­i­ties is up while the pub­lic ser­vices de­part­ment is cut.

Pub­lic util­i­ties in­creases from $151.9 mil­lion this year to $158.1 mil­lion in 2013 and pub­lic ser­vices is down to $66.8 mil­lion in 2013 from $67.3 mil­lion this year.

Mr. Bell on Mon­day high­lighted a rel­a­tively small line item in his pro­posed bud­get for rec­re­ation.

“The ad­min­is­tra­tion also main­tained a com­mit­ment to qual­ity of life is­sues af­fect­ing res­i­dents. Despite the re­jec­tion of a levy to sup­port parks and rec­re­ation, the city will al­lo­cate ap­prox­i­mately $175,000 more in the 2013 bud­get to sup­port rec­re­ation ac­tiv­i­ties for Toledo res­i­dents,” said a state­ment that ac­com­pa­nied the 208-page gen­eral fund bud­get book.

Con­tact Igna­zio Messina at: imessina@the­blade.com  or 419-724-6171.