$20 Million in the Hole

Cick on the graphic to the right to enlarge – it's a slide from the city's Economic Outlook and Financial Forecast, presented to City Council this Wednesday at their first budget work session. And even by the most pony-producing-projections, we're still a little short.

In order to get a sense of the city's total revenues, budget officer Greg Canally prepared three projections: Scenario 1, with the effective property tax (lower than last year's rate, but accounting for rising property values, bringing in the same amount) and 3% sales tax growth; Scenario 2, nominal property tax (same as the current rate), and 3.5% sales tax growth; and Scenario 3, the rollback property tax (the nominal rate, plus an 8% increase in the operations and maintenance portion of the tax rate – 27.30 cents of the total 40.34 cent rate; the rest covers debt obligations), and an optimistic 4% sales tax projection. But even under this last, most bullish projection, revenues – $620.7 million – are surpassed by the city's expenditures – $641.3 million – leaving a $20.6 million deficit.

Now we all remember the hand-wringing and hem-hawing over the even larger budget gap last year. But with these numbers coming out at a work session itself borne of greater transparency and council's desire to come in on the process earlier, well – it's a little spookier.