The state budget cuts will hurt education and health care in the city but will not devastate city government, a top Nutter administration official said Tuesday.
After months of fretting about the fallout from Corbett's budget cuts, city officials now say that the expected direct impact on the city's general fund did not meet their worst fears.
"Our analysis suggests while the governor's budget makes some painful cuts to key city services, the proposal will not hit as hard as some may have predicted," Clay Armbrister, Mayor Nutter's chief of staff, testified Tuesday morning in the year's first budget hearing before City Council.
The cuts include:
- $7.5 million less for the city's Department of Human Services, specifics to be determined.
- A $2.4 million cut in the Human Services Development Fund for homelessness.
- A $2.3 million reduction in Human Services Development Fund money for HIV prevention, lead abatement, and services at city health centers.
- $1.9 million less for after-school and summer youth programs.
While the 2011-12 budget appears relatively stable, without any new tax increases, City Finance Director Rob Dubow acknowledged in the first in a series of budget hearings that the city in 2012-13 plans to raise about 20 percent more revenue for the general fund and school district from property taxes. This would be done through a planned citywide reassessment of property values, called the Actual Value Initiative, by factoring in growth in property values.
The roughly 20 percent figure includes the reassessment and corresponding increase in revenue of about 10 percent plus the temporary 9.9 percent tax hike now in effect.
That revenue will translate into an additional $86 million for city coffers and about $120 million for the struggling Philadelphia School District by 2012-13.
