Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse. (File photo.)
Mayor Eric Papenfuse plans to propose a balanced 2015 budget that will include a $2 million investment in sanitation, nearly $250,000 in staff raises and the hiring of 14 additional public safety personnel, but no tax increases, according to remarks the mayor made during a “sneak peek” of the budget this afternoon.
The budget, which Papenfuse will present to City Council tonight at 6 p.m., projects general fund revenues of $59,370,699 and general fund expenditures of $59,359,748, a decrease of about $100,000 each from last year’s respective totals.
The 2015 budget, Papenfuse said, contains “no gimmicks,” a reference to a multimillion-dollar “plug” that was used to balance the 2014 budget without cutting certain unfunded, though vacant, positions.
The budget also commits the city to greater transparency, he said, by replacing several hundreds of thousands of dollars in off-book discretionary accounts with dedicated funds subject to oversight by City Council.
Papenfuse will also propose hiring 14 new public safety personnel: five firefighters and nine police officers. After the hires, the total number of city firefighters will be 81, up from 76 last year and 62 in 2013, including one secretarial post that will be changed from a uniformed to a non-uniformed position.
The police department hires will bring the city’s force to 147 officers, up from 138 last year and 129 in 2013. Five of the nine proposed police hires, however, are not scheduled to occur until the middle of the year, when they will enable the city to dedicate five school resource officers, or SROs, to protecting students in city schools.
Papenfuse said he has asked the school district to fund those five positions, including their cars and other equipment, in the amount of $1.4 million over the next three years. In the event the district does not come up with the funding, however, the city will seek outside grant money to pay for the positions, he said.
The budget also sets aside $2 million for investing in sanitation, to be spent on repairing and updating the city’s deteriorated fleet and adding equipment to provide more efficient service. The money will come from excess revenues from the disposal rates charged to customers, which were increased last year, although Papenfuse said he hopes to reduce them in the future.
Papenfuse said he hopes the investments in sanitation will allow the city to avoid privatizing the service, an option contemplated last year on the recommendation of the city’s state-appointed receiver. He said he hoped more consistent service from city employees would drive off competition from private haulers.
Papenfuse also promised a “major push” to increase rates of recycling.
The 2015 budget proposal will include raises for various city workers, beginning with a mandatory 1-percent raise for all union employees that will cost the city around $171,799 next year. Papenfuse also will propose $68,869 in raises for select management personnel.
During Tuesday’s preview, the mayor did not provide a complete list of management positions slated for raises, though he did say it would include increasing the police chief’s salary to $94,000 and the police captains’ salaries to $85,000 each, as promised during a council meeting on the subject earlier this fall.
Alongside these raises, Papenfuse said he would cut the salary of the arts, culture and tourism director, from $70,000 to $45,000.
The budget also recommends uses for the host fee, a $1-per-ton benefit that Harrisburg receives for trash delivered to its incinerator. The budget proposes spending $279,537 out of the host fee fund this year, broken down as follows:
-$124,537 for salaries of an arborist, recycling coordinator and planner;
-$50,000 for a recycling truck;
-$70,000 to pay for trash disposal after community cleanup events;
-$35,000 for grants to local environmental projects.
