(SIOUX CITY, IA) Some Sioux City Police and Fire Rescue positions may be on the chopping block. The city council met today to discuss the budget for the next fiscal year and in order to avoid a property tax increase on homeowners, City officials are doing everything they can to find other ways to save.
Running a city can be a daunting task and trying to please everyone is never easy either.
"Obviously, we take a property tax increases very seriously. We don't want to if we don't have to, but we also don't want to reduce services to the point where it has an impact on the community. So somewhere, we're trying to find a balancing act in between," says Bob Scott, Mayor of Sioux City.
Tuesday morning, City officials began feeling the pinch when the budget for the Fiscal year 2014 was presented. The city is proposing a $175 million budget, that's after making more than $4 million worth of reductions. But the City still needs to cut between $300-500 thousand to save homeowners from a property tax increase.
"It's a challenge always and can be described as difficult because your talking about balancing important services and creating a greater challenge to our employees to deliver the same amount of service that they historically have but with less resources," says Paul Eckert, Sioux City Manager.
The City has proposed shaving off a few salaries within its budget, those job cuts would be seen in the Police and Fire departments.
In fact, Eckert says 80 percent of the City's budget is salary and if the council and departments can't find cuts through attrition, some people may lose their jobs.
"We are hopeful, that either through the identification of other cuts, some other revenues besides property tax increases being found, or some other creative means; we can avoid those potential reductions in staff," says Eckert.
Thursday, January 31, 2013, the Police and Fire departments will meet with the city council to discuss those job cuts.
https://www.sioux-city.org/finance
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