From the Terre Haute Tribune Star:
The city council is poised to pass Mayor Duke Bennett’s 2014 budget this week, sparing Terre Haute a potentially jarring financial mess.
A few members of the council last month asked the mayor to present a plan to fix the city’s “general fund,” which has come up in the red each of the past few years. On Thursday night, Bennett gave them just that.
The plan, if successful, would erase the need for an annual loan, called a “tax anticipation warrant,” to float the general fund by 2017. That loan is expected to be $5 million again in 2014, matching its level for the past two years. Bennett, using a Powerpoint presentation, showed the council several new sources of revenue he hopes, along with new spending cuts, can make the general fund whole in the next few years.
Councilman Jim Chalos, D-at large, said he commended Bennett for the presentation after the meeting. “I’ve been around [city budgets] since I was a kid,” said Chalos, whose late father, Pete Chalos, was a four-term mayor in the 1980s and 1990s. “The more open we can be, the fewer problems there will be.”
Chalos is one of six council members who have said they plan to vote in favor of the budget, which comes up for a vote Thursday night.
Failure to pass the budget would amount to a budget cut for the city, according to state officials. If a city does not pass a new budget, it forfeits the additional revenue it would have otherwise been allowed by the state’s “growth quotient,” this year set at 2.6 percent, said Jenny Banks, director of communications for the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance.
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See the full article here:
http://tribstar.com/local/x134973336/City-believes-new-revenue-for-2014-budget-will-provide-more-stability
