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City On Track To End The Year With Budget Surplus

Columbus Finance Director Paul Rakosky says the city is on track to end the year with a 20 million dollar surplus in it's general fund budget.

Rakosky's second-quarter review of city spending projects additional savings by the end of December. Last November, Mayor Michael Coleman proposed a 766 million dollar general fund budget for this year. Rakosky says the 9.3 million dollars saved so far are the result of cost-cutting measures implemented over the last several years. Those include a hiring freeze, lowering the city's contributions to worker pensions, and making workers pay more for health care. Voters approved an income tax increase in 2009, and Rakosky says collections so far this year are running 3 percent higher than projected. As in year's past, if the city ends 2013 with a surplus, that money likely will be carried over into 2014.

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Those recessions forced the city to nearly drain its rainy day fund. But Rakosky says the city has now met its goal to replenish the fund.

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The 75 million dollar figure was also part of Coleman's budget proposal.

 

 

Jim has been with WCBE since 1996. Before that he worked as a reporter at another Columbus radio station, and for three newspapers in Southwest Florida.
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