Councilman Brad Koplinski presenting his proposed budget cuts Friday morning.
City Councilman Brad Koplinski on Friday unveiled a plan to cut $3 million from the Papenfuse administration’s proposed 2016 budget that he says will prevent the need for any tax hike while still preserving a functional, if austere, city government.
Speaking to reporters in the city hall atrium, as Mayor Eric Papenfuse and several department heads looked on from upper-story balconies, Koplinski outlined a series of cuts that would eliminate the need for a proposed $2-per-week hike in the local services tax, a flat tax that affects commuters and residents who work in the city.
His plan answered a challenge issued by Papenfuse, who had defied council as it reviewed his budget this week to find $3 million in unnecessary expenses.
Koplinski, who said he has prided himself in “taking a good, hard look” at budgets over his past eight years on council, said he viewed raising taxes as an “absolute last resort” and that he didn’t think the city was at the point where a hike was required.
“We need an austerity budget, and right now the mayor wants the council to pass a prosperity budget, a budget that pretends Harrisburg’s troubles are over,” said Koplinski, who lost his bid for a third term on council earlier this year. “The taxpayers deserve another alternative.”
The move appears to be an all but solitary effort by Koplinski, who was not joined by fellow council members on Friday and who said he hadn’t consulted with either department heads or the city’s state advisors in crafting his plan.
His suggested cuts covered a set of more than 80 line-items in the Papenfuse budget, each of them likely requiring an individual, up-or-down majority vote from the seven-member council at its final budget hearing next Tuesday, Dec. 15.
Some addressed city hall jobs Koplinski said were unnecessary, such as an atrium receptionist, three laborers in a new “neighborhood services” division, and an administrator for a tax abatement program that has not materialized since council passed its supporting legislation earlier this year.
Others second-guessed the cost projections of city department heads, with Koplinski in most cases relying on spending figures from past years to suggest cuts were possible. For example, he proposed reducing the vehicle fuel budget by $250,000 and the legal services budget by $75,000.
In its budget presentation, the administration had argued that the higher legal expenses were necessary in a year that would include continued litigation in costly lawsuits brought against the city and the renegotiation of union contracts.
Certain cuts involved costs that are not within the city’s control, according to finance director Bruce Weber. For instance, Koplinski called for a $500,000 reduction in disposal costs, which the city must pay to dump trash at the incinerator.
Koplinski’s proposal would also require the city to draw heavily on trash bill revenue to fund general government expenses, a practice Papenfuse said he is trying to end by next year.
The administration’s budget would reduce the trash subsidy from $1.7 million this year to $1.1 million in 2016, while Koplinski’s would appear to increase the subsidy to $2.5 million.
Koplinski also said he appreciated the administration’s proposed hires in police and fire, saying that public safety was the “absolute most important thing that the city does.” “Those have not been touched,” he said of the new hires, although his proposal does call for nearly half-a-million in cuts between the two bureaus.
Addressing his level of support among his colleagues, Koplinski said he thought his proposal had a “50-50” chance of succeeding, but did not name specific members who stood behind him.
He did not present a plan for raising revenue in the event council adopted some, but not all, of his cuts. But he was resolute in saying he would not support a tax hike of any size.
“It seems too easy to increase taxes,” he said. “The hard thing is to dig really deep into the budget and make the hard choices.”
Weber rejected that argument outright. He said the administration did not take the tax hike lightly, but felt it was the only possible way to fund essential services that would be compromised under Koplinski’s plan.
“It’s easy to cut,” Weber said. “It’s harder to face those consequences.”
