Erie Mayor Daria Devlin is preparing to announce her administration’s next move in addressing the city’s $12 million budget deficit.
“Since we’ve announced our budget crisis, we’ve been working really hard here at city hall on the things we can control right now,” said Mayor Devlin.
“Every thing is on the table.”
Mayor Devlin recently held several employee town hall meetings and has been working with Public Financial Management (PFM) to review the city’s finances.
Next Monday, she plans to provide an update on some of her administration’s first round of budget cuts.
“We want to be as transparent as possible,” said Mayor Devlin. “That’s been our approach from the beginning with our employees and the public, and so we’ll just get through this week and then move on to additional cuts in regards to our spending here at city hall.”
PFM determined that the city is facing significant budget deficits over the next five years.
The consultant firm found that there is a hidden shortfall in this year’s budget, due to incorrect budgeting of pension funds.
Without any corrective action, the city is facing a $12.3 million deficit in 2027.
Mayor Devlin tells Erie News Now her top priority is to pinpoint $3 million in cuts.
“We are working towards closing a $3 million gap immediately,” said Mayor Devlin. “We’re going to do that through some budget cuts, layoffs, and then the additional revenue we are working to collect from our non-profit and business community to help us with specific police and fire costs.”
PFM is also in the process of conducting management audits, to determine where cuts can be made.
“I just want to say how difficult and sensitive this is,” said Mayor Devlin. “Whenever we are talking about eliminating peoples positions, it’s very hard and so we want to be sensitive to our employees, trying to help them work through this as best as possible. We anticipate about six eliminations we’ll announce next week, and PFM will be here in the middle of June to do those management audits and its work with us on some larger additional recommendations after that.”
Mayor Devlin is expected to announce the first round of cuts on Monday morning.