WESTFIELD – Mayor Daniel M Knapik is proposing a $120,649,353 general fund budget for the 2016 Fiscal Year which begins July 1, 2015. Knapik cut $4,012,971 from the budget requests submitted by municipal departments.
Knapik is also submitting a budget for revenue generating departments of $14,377,390. State law requires that proposed budgets for those departments and revolving accounts not exceed the income revenue of the previous year, a mandate that cut an additional $4,019,077 from the budget proposed by those departments.
Knapik said that he made initial cuts to the proposed departmental budgets, and then gathered department heads with the goal of further reducing spending, needed to balance the proposed 2016 budge, by $1,250,000. The department supervisors cut another $836,000 by deferring capital equipment purchased and not hiring new personnel to fill existing vacancies.
“Presently I’m not forecasting any layoffs in municipal departments, but we’re not filling three vacancies in the Police Department and moved two paramedics at the Fire Department into the ambulance reserve fund account,” Knapik said.
“The health insurance trust is fully funded,” Knapik said. “The 2016 FY budget will use $2 million of free cash to balance the budget.”
Knapik is also addressing shortfalls in the current 2015 FY budget. The largest number is the snow and ice deficit of nearly $1.3 million.
“We’ll clear that debt through a combination of free cash and squeezing money out of the budget, so 2015 will break even,” Knapik said.
The use of free cash to close out 2015 and to balance the proposed 2016 budget will leave nothing in the free cash account and the city will have to wait until November or December for the state to certify a new free cash number, which historically has been between $1 and $2 million annually.
Knapik projects revenue at $125,459,854 based upon an estimate of $39,970,886 in state aid, $13,793,030 in local receipts and $68,682,517 in property taxes. New growth is projected at $800,000 and is typically higher than that number as new construction appears on the tax rolls.
Knapik is also using $300,000 in new revenue generated by a meals and hotel room tax which the City Council rejected this past year. Knapik is submitting those new taxes to the City Council again tonight with a meal tax of three-quarters (.75) of one percent and a room tax of 6 percent.
