Proposed $202 Million dollar budget presented to City Council

TYLER — City Council Members in Tyler were presented with a proposed budget of $202 million budge on Wednesday. Edward Broussard told KTBB, “This is a drop by 3% compared to last years spending. This has been a year unlike any we have had in kind of recent memory, with maybe the great recession as being the closest thing to it.” The proposed budget asks the city council to implement a No-New-Revenue property tax, keeping the rate at 25.9 cents, a .09 cent decrease from the prior year.

The Tyler City Manager went on to say, “Of Tyler’s budget funds, 38 streams of revenue are seeing ‘unforeseen and difficult contractions.’ Really the budget we built, it’s a maintenance budget. It is designed to kind of keep the services that we are currently doing moving forward. We have been able to kind of trim the budget here and there in order to make things work. It’s been an interesting thing to pull together in light of all of the different demands that we have, especially on public safety we were able, thankfully, to keep police and fire strong. We will have two new police officers added in fact, thanks to a grant.”

Opportunities for public input on the budget are available by attending the next City Council meeting on August 26 at 9 a.m. Final adoption of the budget is scheduled for 9 a.m. at the Sept. 9 meeting at Tyler City Hall.