The Tempe City Council is preparing to discuss a proposal for $30 million in budget cuts to help the city remain balanced in the coming fiscal year at its Friday meeting.
In addition to the cuts, Tempe residents will vote in May on whether to increase the city’s sales tax from 1.8 percent to 2 percent.
“The cuts are necessary to balance the city’s budget,” said Jerry Hart, financial services manager for the city of Tempe. “With the economic downturn, city tax revenues have seen significant declines ... to the point where the city has a $30 million structural deficit.”
The proposal is the latest step in an initiative that began in October, when officials met to determine how the city would apportion the cuts among different departments.
Tim James, an economics professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business, said Tempe’s deficit is a result of the city spending more money than it’s making.
“Even if [the economy] got a bit better, there would still be a deficit,” he said. “Almost every area of activity is going to suffer. [The police], fire departments, parks and recreation ... everybody is going to suffer as a result.”
Charlie Meyer, city manager for Tempe, explained the ideology behind the proposed cuts is not to gut or eliminate services.
“We know we can’t maintain quite the same level [of quality], but we haven’t cut out city services. That gets trickier as we talk about the police and fire departments,” he said.
Those departments are proposed to account for $16 million of the total cuts, or half of the structural deficit. The police department’s target reduction is the largest of all city departments, accounting for more than $13 million.
“At the end of the day, [citizens will probably] look at whether you’ve got fewer police available,” Meyer said. “Then the question is: ‘How do you deploy them?’”
James said police response to crimes could suffer as a result of the cuts.
“There’s a Pandora’s box in terms of what will happen in an economic downturn,” he said. “Reduced policing presence decreases probability of someone being caught, so you might think there’s less of a price [to pay] associated with committing a crime.”
Meyer argued that a primary goal of these cuts includes keeping emergency response teams intact.
“Probably what will take the biggest hit is ... the proactive police initiatives,” Meyer said. “There are ways you can prevent crimes from happening. That’s the part that we’ve prided ourselves on that takes a cut during this economic situation.”
While Meyer said students and residents might not notice a change in services or cuts to city workers, there will be differences.
“We’re cutting back on some of our street-side maintenance workers and park maintenance,” he said. “We’re not shutting down anything. We’re cutting back.”
James said it would likely be a gradual deterioration in the level of services.
“The grass won’t get cut so often in the parks. It might take longer to check out a book at the library,” he said.
The Tempe City Council will meet on Thursday about changes to the proposed sales tax, including whether or not the tax will apply to food items.
The meeting involving discussion of the proposed budget cuts will take place at 8 a.m. Friday at Tempe City Hall, and all residents are welcome to attend.
Reach the reporter at joseph.schmidt@asu.edu
