Erie City Council finally passed its budget for 2023 but not without plenty of delay.
Erie City Council has been workshopping ideas to amend Mayor Joe Schember’s proposed city budget for months. Mayor Schember proposed the budget to the council earlier than any mayor ever has before, presenting it on Oct. 19.
Evidently, the council needed every day they could manage, not seeing eye to eye until Dec. 2, days before a passed budget was required.
At the council’s last meeting on Dec. 21, the council asked Mayor Schember and his team to cut $2 million of spending. Tuesday night, a revised budget cutting nearly 820 thousand dollars was passed…so what changed?
The city council president shared with WJET what she believed changed the mind of other council members.
“I think one of the things is that most council members realized that to go any deeper, we would be putting city services in jeopardy,” said Liz Allen, Erie City Council president.
Allen also added that she thinks that it’s more important than ever that the council starts working on a plan for 2024 sooner than later.
“It was a lot of hard work but I am glad that there were five council members who agreed it was time to approve it and then get to work on 2024. I’m dead serious that we need to work on 2024 beginning in 2023,” said Allen.
The proposed changes to the budget mostly impact city police with $631,000 of $820,000 freed-up dollars coming from recalculated police hiring and retirement dates.
While the budget was passed, it became a down-to-the-wire situation and some might consider it abnormal to hold out on budget approval this long.
However, the city solicitor disagrees.
“Ideally, you always want to pass it with enough time and prefer to pass it before the holidays. That doesn’t always happen, and it didn’t happen in this case. That’s not a problem,” said Edward Betza, city solicitor. “We just have to get it done before Dec. 31, and I think council and the mayor are diligent in trying to make sure that we spend the money in the best interest of the taxpayers.”
