Friday, March 15, 2013

Sun-Commercial Reports Bicknell Seeks to cut $65,000 from Budget

From the Vincennes Sun-Commercial:

The hard work continues in Bicknell as officials there try to carve away as much as they can from the city’s budget to bring spending into line with revenue.

As much as they’ve been able to do so far, cutting some $65,000, that actually only provides temporary relief; officials are pretty much going to have to keep at it, month after month, for the rest of the year.

Bicknell faces not sequestration with its irritating belt-tightening but the far-more serious problem of hitting the debt limit and not being able to push beyond it.

It’s going to be rough for all those involved — the mayor, council members, city employees who may be forced to take furloughs or, worse-case scenario, may lose their jobs.


It’s going to be especially hard on residents, who will bear the brunt of any further decline in the city’s fortunes.

Basic services such as fire and police protection, well-maintained streets and sidewalks, adequate recreational facilities, these are vital to a city, both today and the years ahead.

A city that cannot provide an acceptable level of public safety, whose infrastructure falls into disrepair, which doesn’t offer amenities such as parks, that’s a city less likely to attract new residents or investment, no matter how low the tax rate.

Last year Bicknell faced a similar problem after officials failed to properly submit the city’s budget; the city had to operate with the money it had gotten in 2011, a problem given that for 2012 officials had increased spending with raises for employees and even some new hirings.

Probably, had last year’s budget been properly submitted, the state Department of Local Government Finance wouldn’t have approved it, not without first requiring the city to make substantial cuts to bring spending in line with revenue.

Our guess it was just as far out of whack as the 2013 budget has proven to be.

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See the full article here:

http://suncommercial.com/articles/2013/03/13/opinions/opinions/doc51413e4f25db9221865278.txt