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A week of budget hearings later…

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Well, that was easy.

By most accounts, York City will move forward in the next month-plus with a budget that includes no tax increase and few significant cuts to city services.

Here is York’s police chief, speaking on day four of this week’s budget hearings. The crowd shown was about the usual.

Sure, it took a dozen hours or so of initial presentations this week, and likely there’s more to follow.

But only five people showed up to complain about the proposal as it stands.

So we’re good to go.

Right, York city?

Eh, maybe not.

Through a week’s worth of testimony we heard plenty about the details of this proposed deal — a city budget still in its infancy but seemingly full of the same old tough trade-offs. Today’s savings is tomorrow’s capital expense.

Here’s the previous coverage, and here are few issues that didn’t make it past the board room chatter, or at least past Twitter.

  • A full-time youth coordinator job will likely be eliminated from parks and rec, to be replaced by part-time help at a cost savings.
  • When it comes to paving and road repair, it was “the year of the sinkhole,” according to city supervisor A.J Grimm.
  • There were no city paving projects budgeted for 2012, officials said. But $100,000 has been set aside for such projects in 2013.
  • City officials say water infiltration in sewer lines is a problem, and they’ve budgeted money to fix it. When water leaks into sewer lines, taxpayers fund the treatment of that rain water, which presumably doesn’t need to be treated.
  • About 900 adults and children got free shots in 2012 through the city’s Department of Health. That’s a broad figure, and covers an array of vaccinations.
  • Approximately 263,000 square feet of residential and commercial space downtown was redeveloped in 2012, much of it with the help of the city, according to director of economic development Kevin Schreiber.
  • Tax money from all sources covers about 53 percent of York city’s budget, according to business administrator Michael O’Rourke. Police and fire alone make up more of the budget expense than that.
  • The mayor informed Human Relations Commission members they would have “exactly the same budget” at last year, and agreed to provide that budget at a future time. HRC did not have it at the hearing this week, but thanked the city and said the funding should be sufficient.
  • Business administrator O’Rourke said White Rose Community Television raised $1,200 at a recent telethon, calling it “disappointing.”
  • The fire budget is up a bit from last year because of the increased cost of laundry, and of uniforms. Also, it will soon begin to cost more to repair county radios, officials said.
  • The fire budget currently includes $150,000 to fix the roof of the fire station on Roosevelt Avenue, something the mayor said pointed to the need for better capital budgeting across departments.

Now, being the new guy affords me little room to talk perspective. Sure, I’ve looked over the past few years’ numbers, and I have a grasp at least intellectually now of where we’re starting from this budget season.

But I wasn’t here last year for that 17 percent tax increase. Or the hike the year before.

And I understand people’s frustration, even with no apparent tax raise coming, at not being able to get to the daytime meetings. Officials seemed to be doing their part, but it’s always nice to feel like you’re heard.

There was something of the universal, I thought, in one of a handful of statements offered by a city resident during a brief public comment period on Friday.

“There are so many good things about York,” Craig Smith told city officials. “I’ll tell you, you find a lot of ways to frustrate people.”

Twelve hours of hearings later, I have some small inkling of the latter, though of course such processes are the way the world works.

As to the former, well, I’m getting there. And budget hearings are over.

So call me.


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