Harrisburg City Council at a legislative session on Tuesday

With new Harrisburg leadership comes a new way of doing things, and as Mayor Wanda Williams’ team takes office, the budget looks quite different this year.

At a City Council meeting on Tuesday, the new city administration presented its proposed, amended $69.9 million general fund budget for 2022, a $10 million decrease from last year’s spending plan.

There is no proposed property tax increase.

In December, council passed a placeholder general fund budget of $79 million, essentially a replica of the previous year’s budget, with the understanding that the incoming administration likely would reopen the document and make changes.

They certainly did, significantly reducing the budget to allow the city to “live within its means,” according to Dan Hartman, the city’s new business administrator.

Hartman presented the proposed budget along with Marita Kelley, the new director of the Department of Budget and Finance, and Bryan McCutcheon, accounting manager.

“This is a difficult budget,” Hartman said. “It’s a budget of shared sacrifice across city departments. It’s a budget that makes some tough decisions to begin to tackle our remaining fiscal challenges. It’s a budget that will help us transition from COVID and a past of show game budget tricks to a cleaner and easier to understand budget that invests in our future.”

Hartman said that the team worked to cut out “unnecessary” expenditures in the budget, in order to balance it. In last year’s budget, planned expenditures exceeded revenues, he stated.

In this proposed spending plan, the city would have a budget surplus with projected general fund revenue of $72.5 million, including federal American Rescue Plan funds that will recapture the city’s COVID-related expenditures.

According to Hartman, there was no one budget item that would be significantly cut as part of the $10 million budget decrease. Instead, the administration took small amounts from different places that added up, he said.

Some of the cuts came from simply eliminating salaries for positions that were never filled and checking off projects that already had been completed. It also includes reining in the number of outside consulting firms that the city contracts with, he said. Hartman added that his own department’s budget was slashed by ending a contract with lobbying firm Maverick Strategies and by eliminating travel and new equipment funds, among other items.

“It was finding where we could make those cuts that wouldn’t necessarily impact services to the citizens of Harrisburg,” he said.

On the other hand, the proposed budget does increase spending in some areas.

The budget includes increased funds totaling over $5 million for several departments. According to McCutcheon, this would fund an IT system modernization for the city, as well as street light and sign repair/replacement. More money also would go towards vehicle management, the police and fire bureaus and the parks and recreation departments.

Under the proposed budget, all city employees would receive raises, as well. There would be no layoffs.

The budget proposes paying $10.7 million in debt service, some of which includes paying down the city’s remaining $19 million general obligation debt to bond insurer Ambac. Hartman said the city has yet to decide on its plan for paying off the full general obligation debt. However, Williams has expressed interest in paying it off rather than refinancing it, which former mayor Eric Papenfuse pushed for.

Besides the general fund budget, other parts of the 2022 spending plan include a $17 million budget for the neighborhood services fund (sanitation) and $8.9 million for capital projects.

In its budget, the administration plans to use $8.86 million of the city’s American Rescue Plan money as reimbursement for COVID-related expenses and revenue losses. This includes reimbursing the city  for revenue it didn’t receive from the Harrisburg Senators for its lease of the city-owned FNB Field when baseball was shut down. Due to the pandemic, the city also suffered substantial shortfalls from expected parking and mercantile business tax revenues. Reimbursement would also account for expenses from the city’s rent relief and neighborhood stabilization programs, which helped businesses and residents impacted financially by the pandemic.

Hartman said that Harrisburg eventually will create a supplementary budget for funds that it plans to use from its $48.8 million in rescue plan funds. First, the city will begin the public outreach process to hear what residents want to see funds used for. However, Hartman offered some of the administration’s ideas, such as funding the creation of a new health bureau, adding police, fire bureau and public works employees, and enhancing city parks. They plan to hold five public meetings to discuss the funds in the coming months.

Council will further discuss the proposed 2022 budget at three budget hearings on Feb. 8, 9 and 10, each at 5:30 p.m. The first will be focused on the public safety budget, the second on administration, building and housing, and the third on public works, engineering, neighborhood services, parks, recreation and facilities. Council plans to vote on the proposed budget on Feb. 15.

Also at the legislative session, council approved several of Williams’ cabinet appointees. Hartman was voted in as the city’s business administrator, Kelley as director of budget and finance, Nathaniel Spriggs as director of public works and Dennise Hill as director of the Department of Building and Housing Development. Spriggs was appointed by Papenfuse in 2021, and Hill served as interim director of her department previously.

Taking another step towards using its rescue plan funds, council approved a contract with NW Financial Group, LLC for financial advisory services related to Harrisburg’s rescue plan funds.

If you like what we do, please support our work. Become a Friend of TheBurg!