Dept. heads work on cuts to 5%
IS MAYOR NUTTER sharpening his budget ax? Finance Director Rob Dubow has asked every city department and agency head to prepare plans for cutting up to 5 percent from their budgets in the fiscal year that begins July 1.
IS MAYOR NUTTER sharpening his budget ax?
Finance Director Rob Dubow has asked every city department and agency head to prepare plans for cutting up to 5 percent from their budgets in the fiscal year that begins July 1.
"As part of the process of ensuring peak effectiveness," Dubow wrote in a Jan. 8 memo, department heads should "use a combination of cost reductions and non-tax revenue enhancements to reduce the city's net costs."
Dubow asked departments and agencies to prepare two plans: one reducing 3 percent of their costs, and another reducing 5 percent.
No departments were exempted from the process. Plans were due Monday.
"This was something the Cabinet as a whole thought we should do," Dubow said in a brief interview, adding that he would meet with department heads in coming days to review their ideas.
While the city finished the last fiscal year with a healthy $298 million surplus, it faces growing health-benefit, pension and prison costs.
Nutter will have to negotiate municipal-union contracts this year, and he has some major policy initiatives to fund, including a crime-fighting effort.
Dubow said asking managers to think of ways to save money doesn't mean the administration will be cutting services.
"One of the things the mayor promised during the campaign was that he was going to find ways to run government better," Dubow said. "And we're going to do that."
Nutter is expected to present a proposed city budget and five-year financial plan to City Council at the end of the month.
Both are subject to Council approval, and the five-year plan must be approved by the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, the state agency that has been reviewing the city's finances since 1992. *
