More News

Frederick city employees will take an extended Christmas break and three major city departments will make do with significantly less under the city's revised $79.2 million budget unveiled on Monday.

In light of a more than $1 million deficit imposed by a cut to the city's tax equity funds by Frederick County commissioners, coupled with a $360,000 state cut to the city's highway user funds, city leaders had to go close a $1.42 million deficit in the city's originally proposed and balanced $80 million budget.

"It was hard, but we looked citywide to see where cuts could be made," said Katie Barkdoll, the city's budget director. "I think every cut that we made has an impact on the city, but our managers and directors did an extremely good job of putting in the budget what they needed."

The majority of the cuts that made up the revised budget proposals came from the departments of police, planning, and parks and recreation, all of which were due to be the beneficiaries of the tax equity reimbursements.

Tax equity is money that the city is annually reimbursed from the county for services that Frederick city residents pay for in county taxes, but receive from the city.

To be fair, Mayor W. Jeff Holtzinger (R) said he tapped the departments that were due the funds first with the help of department heads. "I looked to the departments to tell me how to do it," he said. "It was scraping for everybody. No one was immune from it."

Other funds were made up by a proposed Dec. 24 furlough day for all city employees except police, trash service providers and employees with the Frederick Community Action agency. The furlough day saved about $46,000.

"We know it's not a very nice Christmas gift, but we thought that if there was a day you could do it, it would be then," Holtzinger said. "And it gives enough notice so that folks can budget for it."

The city also re-classed what was originally a transfer of about $750,000 to the city's airport fund into a loan, which means that the operating budget will now be reimbursed for that money.

The police took the largest cut, $360,470, primarily by freezing seven sworn positions and holding off on filling three administrative positions until June 2010.

The department also deferred its 2010 police academy class until March 2010, and kept its bilingual staff at half of what was originally planned. The department also took a $71,000 cut in its overtime pay.

The city's planning department took a cut of about $42,000 by trimming its supply and operating budget.

The Department of Parks and Recreation took a trim of about $39,000 from its budget in machinery and part-time salary cuts. However, the Summer Playgrounds Program, which was slated to be cut entirely, was fully restored with the help of an anonymous donor.

The city's engineering department and informational technology department also sacrificed a combined $32,500.

Holtzinger said he feels comfortable with the newly revised budget despite the hard decisions that some departments had to make.

But he said that he also had to keep the next fiscal year in mind. "We want to make thing as good as we can, because it's probably going to be worse next year."

E-mail Erica L. Green at egreen@gazette.net.