Bloomington officials champion deep cuts despite 2015 deficit

Posted on August 22, 2015
Bloomington City Council
The Bloomington City Council received a report about the city’s FY 2015 budget at Monday’s Committee of the Whole meeting. (Joe Ragusa/WJBC)

By Joe Ragusa

BLOOMINGTON – The City of Bloomington didn’t have to dip into its reserves last year as much as city officials were planning to.

The city’s unaudited financial report for fiscal year 2015 shows the city dipped into the general fund $2.2 million: $409,422 for going overbudget and $1.8 million for public safety pensions.

Finance Director Patti-Lynn Silva told the city council Monday the city made about $3 million in cuts and $2.2 million of that came from personnel-related expenses.

“Yes, savings (are) good. The savings won’t help our deficit going forward,” Silva said. “In this case, because most of it is personnel-related and some of the other stuff I know is work that stopped, I wouldn’t say it’s a complete positive for the city.”

Mayor Tari Renner said the city was expecting to go deeper into the general fund.

“It’s tight, fiscal, prudent management of our city’s resources that have allowed us to have a $1 million more in reserves that we thought we were going to have,” Renner said.

After passing a balanced 2015 budget, the city had to revise its budget to reflect a potential $3.9 million deficit. The actual budget deficit in the city’s unaudited report was nine times less than that.

The city expects a $7 million deficit in fiscal year 2017’s budget.

Joe Ragusa can be reached at [email protected].

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