City Council at the budget hearing Tuesday night.
Reiterating his plea to grow his government’s annual budget, Mayor Eric Papenfuse on Tuesday night gave City Council essentially two options: either approve a tax hike, or pick up the knife and make the cuts yourself.
In the first of two hearings on his 2016 budget, the mayor renewed his claim that the city needed $3 million in new taxes both to cover shortfalls in expected revenues and to fund essential services like firefighters, police and paved roads.
Papenfuse defended his plan against an often skeptical council, defying them to find proposed expenses that “wouldn’t cripple essential services” if cut. “You’re not going to find $3 million,” he said. In fact, he added, “I wish we could spend more.”
The $60 million general fund budget, which represents an increase of $5 million over the projected actual expenses for the current year, has ballooned in part due to unexpected jumps in health care and pension costs, each set to grow by $1 million.
It also includes $660,000 in new hires, although the mayor said most of those would pay for themselves. For instance, new firefighters would continue to reduce overtime expenses, while an extra tax administrator would improve collections.
Papenfuse also proposes to hire 18 new workers under a separate “neighborhood services” division, to be funded out of city trash bills. The new division will absorb many expenses previously funded by taxes, including some road and parks maintenance and bill collecting, as recommended by consultants last year.
Some council members challenged the new expenses. “We need an austerity budget,” said Councilman Brad Koplinski. “This seems like a prosperity budget.”
Councilwoman Sandra Reid told the mayor to scale up his budgets more gradually, suggesting he was raising taxes to cover costs he wanted but did not really need. Council President Wanda Williams disagreed, saying the expenses were justified, but that she wished there were another option to raise revenue.
But Papenfuse, clicking through a slideshow of proposed spending, asked council to identify what could be cut without hurting residents’ quality of life. And he defended his tax hike, a $2 weekly increase on both residents and commuters who work in the city, as the “least painful” option of the possible ways to raise money.
An increase in the local services tax, as the tax is known, became available to the city under recent amendments to Act 47, the state program that assists distressed municipalities. Fred Reddig, Harrisburg’s coordinator under that program, told council Tuesday that the hike would expire when the city leaves Act 47.
Reddig also reviewed suggested amendments to the Harrisburg Strong Plan, the state’s 2013 recovery plan for the cash-strapped capital. Among the amendments were recommendations that the city take the first steps towards adopting a home rule charter and that it come up with a plan for leaving the program by 2018.
Papenfuse has persistently attacked the Strong Plan in recent months. In particular, he has faulted its estimates of income and real estate taxes—both have fallen short of expectations—and its projections of proceeds from a lease of downtown parking.
Reddig acknowledged the parking shortfalls Tuesday, saying he agreed with the mayor’s estimate that the city would receive $1 million less than anticipated next year. But he also defended the plan, saying it provided the city more parking money than it used to receive and that it was based on the best available information at the time.
A second hearing is scheduled for Wednesday at 5:30 before a final vote on the budget Dec. 15.
This story has been corrected to say that the city’s 2016 budget represents a $5 million increase over the current year’s “projected actual expenses,” not its “projected actual budget.”
