Tax income for the city of Peoria isn’t as strong as anticipated. The city council took an initial look Tuesday night
at a revised budget for next year, a budget originally approved a year ago as part of a two-year budgeting process.
Income from sales taxes, personal income taxes and traffic fines are not growing as expected. City manager Patrick Urich says that is mostly due to the economy. “What we’re really looking at is trying to be judicious with our revenue estimates so we can anticipate the decline in the growth of our economy. It’s not saying that our economy is shrinking, we’re simply saying it’s just not going to grow as fast.”
While income for operations will be tighter, capital income will increase. As a result, the overall budget will jump more than three-million dollars next year because of bond issues to fix issues at two library branches and for the combined sewer overflow project.
City Manager Patrick Urich says, “we need to finalize the library capital projects which is fixing the HVAC system at the main library and also the Lakeview branch. And then within the sewer funds, we also need to look at how we can prepare ourselves for the CSO.”
The amended total budget for next year will be nearly 204-million dollars. The council is expected to approve the amended budget November 15.