HUBBARD Council to determine cuts

HUBBARD -- With a $256,000 deficit looming in a proposed general fund budget calling for expenditures of $1,935,000 for next year, city council will conduct a special meeting at 6 p.m. Dec. 30 to consider what cuts need to be made.
The city has about $600,000 in reserves, which could be used to cover such a shortfall, and faces a potential fiscal emergency in 2004 if those reserves are depleted, city Auditor Mike Villano said Monday.
"Costs generally continue to escalate each year. Sometime in 2004, if that trend continues, we will have exhausted all our reserve funds, at which point we would then be in a position that the state would consider fiscal emergency," he explained.
The budget was scheduled to be acted upon at Monday's council meeting, but council members deferred action and asked that the budget be revisited and additional cuts be made.
Unsure of layoffs
The mayor and city department heads were to meet today to discuss potential cuts, and Villano said he wasn't sure if job cuts by nonreplacement of workers who leave voluntarily would be sufficient or if layoffs would be needed.
"Costs keep escalating. The economy is very slow. Interest income has fallen off for us. The state has frozen local government monies," Villano said. "Income tax is performing, at least for us, fairly well, but, it's just the general economic conditions of the country. Every city right now is facing budgetary problems. The state has a huge budget problem."
Mary Benton of School Street chided city officials for having too expensive a municipal government for the population of 8,000 being served. "All the buyouts and everything. Cell phones. We spend money like we're a big metropolis," she observed.
Benton suggested moving the police department from its current mold-plagued building into available space the existing city hall. "That lobby out there is big enough for the police station. We don't have to add onto this building. We don't need another building," she said.
"We've got to find the money before we can do anything," replied Lisha Pompili Baumiller, D-3rd.