Tacoma City Manager Jim Walton presented his preliminary City budget for the 2005-2006 biennium to the City Council on Saturday, offering his proposals for how to bridge a $29.6 million budget gap. If adopted, the proposal would cut more than $16 million from various departments in the City, would incorporate a $7 million cash carry forward from 2003-2004, $1.3 million from sales of City-owned properties and add $4.4 million in revenues from taxes and fees for service.
We have given you our best effort to make the hard choices, painful choices, to do the best for the citizens of Tacoma over the next two years, Walton told City Council. Our approach was to preserve the highest quality possible for those services that the City will continue to perform not to try and preserve every service at the cost of quality.
Complete information from the Oct. 23 budget workshop is available on the Citys online newsroom at http://www.cityoftacoma.org/tacomanews, including documents from the meeting.
