Published: November 11, 2008 10:27 pm         

Terre Haute’s slimmed down 2009 budget on display Thursday

TERRE HAUTE — The public will have a chance to see the city’s slimmer 2009 budget at a public hearing at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in City Hall.

The budget will be tighter next year because of cuts in Indiana property taxes. City officials expect revenues to be down around $3 million next year and even more the following year.

“I know for a fact we cut $2 million out of the budget from last year,” said Mayor Duke Bennett, who will be at the public hearing to take questions about the 2009 spending plan. “This year we’re not going to spend as much because we can’t because our reserves are shrinking,” he said.

Bennett said he has managed to cut about 6 percent of spending from the city budget.

The 2009 budget calls for about 3 percent salary increases for most city employees, but that may not happen again next year, Bennett indicated. The city was able to afford the 2009 pay raises in part by not filling open positions and finding ways to cut expenses on city purchases, he said. That meant some city employees had to work harder, Bennett said. “I wanted to reward them with something noticeable in their paychecks at least while we could because it will be much more difficult to do that in the future,” he said.

So far, Bennett has received no strong opposition to anything in the 2009 budget, he said. City councilmen were able to question the mayor last month at a special council meeting. Many questions came from freshman councilman Neil Garrison, D-5th.

“This administration has done a pretty good job of setting the tone with the public that we will be cutting expenses in the very near future,” Garrison noted. “I think this budget reflects preliminary stages of tighter budgets to come.”

“As far as I could tell they’ve done a pretty good job of trying to keep the expenses in line,” said councilman George Azar, D-at large, a council veteran. The budget is not balanced, but it can be funded with existing city revenues, he said.

Bennett, who took office in January, said his goal is to eventually reach a balanced budget; however, “It’s going to be several years before we can have a balanced budget. We haven’t had a balanced budget for a long time,” he said.

If all the spending in the 2009 budget is added together, it totals more than $73 million; however, much of that spending is paid for with direct fees, such as sewage treatment bills and licensing fees.

The city’s general fund – which covers most day-to-day city spending – is mostly funded through property taxes, local income taxes, cigarette taxes and other sources of tax revenue, Bennett said.

The biggest single expense on the 2009 city budget is the Fire Department at around $11.9 million with an additional $2.5 million budgeted for firefighter pensions. The second-largest expense is the city Police Department, which has a 2009 budget of just less than $11 million with an additional $2.8 million set aside for police pensions.

Together, police and fire protection expenses amount to 39 percent of the total 2009 city budget.

Other big-ticket items set for 2009 include the Board of Public Works and Safety, which has an annual budget of $4.75 million; the Motor Vehicle Highway Department, which has a $4.6 million 2009 budget and the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, which is set to cost $3.6 million.

In all, salaries for city employees total $24.2 million in 2009 while benefits for those employees costs an additional $9.4 million. Benefits include employer-paid Social Security taxes, Medicare, health, dental and life insurance and public employee retirement benefits payments.

The city is set to spend $234,748 in 2009 on employee dental insurance and $1.2 million on overtime for city employees. Cell phones used by city employees are budgeted at $115,098 in 2009.

The mayor earns the highest salary in the 2009 budget at $87,035. Other top salary earners include the city engineer at $74,477, the controller at $67,581, the Wastewater Utility director at $68,960 and the fire and police chiefs at $62,245.

The city’s 98 firefighters will receive a salary of $41,644 next year with higher salaries for firefighters of higher rank. There are 66 patrolmen budgeted for the Police Department and they receive a salary of $42,088 in the 2009 budget. Higher-ranking police officers also receive higher salaries.

Members of the City Council receive $14,166 per year in the 2009 budget.

In addition to base salaries, each employee in the budget also receives several thousand dollars annually in benefits paid by the city.

Under the 2009 budget, at least one city job is paying less than it has in the past. The city attorney will receive $57,926 in 2009. That’s less than the $61,369 the job paid in 2006. City Attorney Chou-il Lee decided, based on the work load he was taking, that he could ask for a lesser salary, Bennett said. “We’re just trying to cut where we can,” Bennett said. “That helped out the entire budget.”

Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.