City recommends raising property taxes

AUSTIN (KXAN) - The City of Austin’s financial staff presented Mayor Lee Leffingwell and the Austin City Council with budget recommendations Wednesday at 9 a.m. for Fiscal Year 2010. Here is a full list of the budget recommendations.

Part of the recommendations included raising property taxes by $72 per year for the median household, arriving as a way to shore up a nearly $30 million budget shortfall for 2009-2010.

After City Manager Marc Ott announced the multimillion dollar budget shortfall in late April, he asked for most of the city's general-fund departments to cut 7 percent from their budgets.

Some cut recommendations

• Elimination of 105 vacant positions
• Closing eight noncompliant fill-and-draw pools
• Cutting the operation of the day labor site
• City employees will have up to three days of furloughs
• City employees give up pay increases

Items recommended to be saved

• City will maintain hours of operations at libraries, recreation centers and cultural centers
• Continue the Summer Youth Employment Program
• Police cadet program

Recommended fee increases

• Property taxes increase by $72 per year for the media household
• Water rates will rise by 4 percent
• $5 entrance fee for Trail of Lights
• Parking fees
• Development fees
• EMS transport fees

Earlier this year, Ott asked general fund departments to cut seven percent of their budgets. Ott also asked the city's public safety departments- including police , fire and EMS - to cut 3.5 percent.

Lists of possible cuts for the police and fire departments have made their ways out into public discourse, among them the widely debated police cadet class cut that could save the city more than $5 million.

The cadet class, delayed already three times, is scheduled to start in September 2009.

Austin Fire Chief Rhoda Mae Kerr has recommended reducing the number of fire trucks and cutting the number of arson investigators nearly in half, saving the department nearly $600,000.

The city's budget office also recommended raising ambulance rates to increase about $3.7 million in revenue.

The proposed budget avoided some unpopular cuts with the community including funding decreases for pet sterilization and micro-chipping as well as cuts to funding utility services for private sports fields.

Roughly 750 people participated in a cost-reduction Budget Town Hall exercise and another 650 made their recommendations online.

The city will hold a meeting on the housing budget Thursday.

The police, fire, EMS, Municipal Court, health and human Services, library and parks and recreation departments will present their budgets at a meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 5 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The next day the city will hold a public hearing.

The Austin Energy, Economic Growth and Redevelopment Office, Austin Water Utility, Solid Waste Services, Watershed Protection, Public Works, Austin Transportation Department, Aviation, Convention Center, and Planning and Development Review departments will present their budgets on Wednesday, Aug. 19 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

If needed, the city will again host a public hearing the next day and hold more budget presentations on Wednesday ,Aug. 26 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The budget approval readings will take place from Sept. 14 to 16.