“We’ve been in this pattern of having really bleak budgets and it’s doom and gloom every year,” said Vogel, who attended the meeting via teleconference. “We’re not in that and I just want people to understand what the big levers were that we were able to pull to change that.”
For the second year in a row, council was discussing a preliminary budget that came to them with no deficit, no recommended tax increases, and no sharp cuts to staffing or services. The outlook marked a sharp contrast to late 2022, when council’s budget season began with a preliminary budget deficit of nearly $1 million and ended with a tax increase of 9 percent and the use of $642,000 in federal pandemic relief funds.
Prior to last year, in fact, council seemed to follow an annual ritual that started soon after Halloween and often stretched past Christmas. The common starting point was a seemingly insurmountable deficit that grew larger each year. The central conflict was framed as a dilemma featuring two equally unappealing choices: the frying pan — taxes must be raised — or the fire — services must be slashed.
Providing an ominous chorus in the background was the yearly bemoaning of how the city’s stagnant tax base and disproportionate share of nonprofit institutions resulted in less of a revenue stream than a revenue trickle.
As they took their first full look at the 2025 budget, City Council members were singing a different tune Tuesday.
In response to Vogel’s question — what accounted for the transition from “doom and gloom” to the blue-sky forecast offered this year — City Manager Maryann Menanno highlighted key changes: restarting the budget process from scratch with new software that offers a more transparent and granular view of city finances and a more accurate “true cost allocation” of revenues and expenses.
On a night that featured widespread agreement among city leaders, Mayor Jaime Kinder took issue with Menanno’s response — not because she disagreed, but because the explanation shortchanged the role played by city officials, including Menanno herself, in shaping the budget.
“What I want to point out is the hard work and vision that has brought us (in) years from a deficit to a balanced budget — that is thinking outside the box,” Kinder said, citing the city’s restoration of traditional pensions to police officers, a contract to provide police services with Meadville Medical Center and a 20-year police services agreement with Vernon Township. “This is a bigger thing than budget software. This is good management, this is hard work.”
Kinder praised the “outside the box” thinking that enabled the city to launch an ambulance service and hire more employees while simultaneously eliminating the annual preliminary deficits that had grown more and more intimidating.
“Instead of scrambling all of the time and reacting, you are able to go — in years — to go from deficit, needing money from the federal government, to a balanced budget,” she said. “Let’s not skate over that because it is hard work and it is something that people thought couldn’t be done.”
Another factor that contributed to an improved budget process, according to Finance Manager April Smith, was more increased involvement across the city’s departments.
“We’re not looking at it the way it’s always been looked at,” she said, “and I think that kind of helped shed a new light on how to balance.”
The result, Vogel said, has been a projection for next year that constitutes “a real budget and isn’t just made up numbers.”
The $14.2 million budget represents an increase of 11.9 percent over the $12.7 million budgeted for this year. Much of the increase, according to Smith, results from a “major jump” in debt payments.
Total city debt consists of $34.6 million in principal and another $10.8 million in interest due. The annual payment on that debt is projected to increase from $1.2 million this year to $3 million next year, according to the proposed budget.
The complete proposed budget is available online at cityofmeadville.com.
City Council’s budget season will continue next month with votes on preliminary approval expected at the Dec. 3 meeting and final approval Dec. 17. Both meetings will be preceded by public hearings at 5:45 p.m. Council meets in the City Building, 894 Diamond Park.
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