For months, South Bend city officials have been finding ways to trim the budget for 2009.
Even though the official vote will be on November 10th, those cuts won't be official until April.
The city doesn’t have the tax rate for this year, and it’s unknown what type of impact will result from Indiana's new property tax caps.
Officials are expecting that number to be about a nine million dollar loss in revenue.
In the meantime, they're looking for as much input from the public as possible to come up with additional revenue.
At Monday night's public hearing, just one person stood
The rest of the suggestions on ways to trim the budget were from the South Bend Common Council.
Some suggestions were bringing in additional revenue during Notre Dame home game weekends with a food and beverage tax and a hotel-motel tax.
City Controller Catherine Fanello explained major expenditures come from personnel and health benefits but, she says over the last five years, 80 city positions have been eliminated.
The one person from the public who did take the stand questioned if the city might still have too many employees. He compared South Bend to other cities in the Hoosier state.
We asked Fanello, “Do you think South Bend has too many employees?” She said, “Do I think we have too many employees? I don't have anything to base an answer on. We don't have privatized services here. We are offering the services. One of the cities he mentioned was Evansville. Evansville does have services that are privatized so those employees don't show up on the books.”
When the council votes on the budget November 10th, it will be a baseline budget.
Mayor Luecke drafted a letter that will go out to employees on Friday explaining any reductions in force would not happen until after April 1st.
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