Erie City Council OKs 2024 budget after $655,000 adjustment; garbage/sewer hikes approved

The city of Erie's 2024 budget has been finalized — but not without a number of adjustments, including a significant cut in police overtime.

Erie City Council gave final approval to the budget on Wednesday night, during its last regular meeting of the year.

Mayor Joe Schember in October proposed a $103.2 million general fund city spending plan for 2024 that does not include a property tax increase. However, the spending plan plugged in garbage and sewer fee hikes that collectively generate about $1.4 million for the city.

Prior to Wednesday's meeting, City Council and Schember's administration agreed to roughly $655,000 in budget adjustments that include expense cuts; additional full-time positions; and new revenues from public grants and other sources.

The general fund budget approved Wednesday night is roughly $102.5 million. The city's total budget — including enterprise funds for sewer, garbage, stormwater management and other services that charge a fee to residents/businesses — is about $166 million.

Schember’s 2024 budget also uses roughly $2.8 million set aside from the Erie Water Works lease prepayment deal of 2020 to balance the budget and avoid a structural deficit.

That deal provided the city roughly $95 million to stabilize its finances in exchange for the city agreeing to extend the Water Works’ lease to 2060. Erie Water Works operates the city-owned water system via a long-term lease agreement.

As far back as 2020, Schember told City Council that his administration planned to set aside about $11.5 million from the water lease deal to handle future budget shortfalls, which would help the city avoid raising property taxes.

Council passed the full general fund budget via a 7-0 vote. Here are some details of the 2024 spending plan:

How was police overtime affected?

City Council and Schember's administration agreed to a $280,000 cut in what Schember wanted for police overtime in 2024. The mayor's proposed budget included nearly $2 million for police overtime, a roughly 25 percent increase over the bureau’s 2023 overtime allocation of $1.3 million.

Police overtime is now budgeted at roughly $1.7 million for 2024. Through October, the city had spent about $1.5 million on overtime for its Bureau of Police.

Even with that reduction, I think we can make it work," Schember said. "The one thing police don't have control over is the serious crimes like murder, which we would have to (investigate) and those cases take a lot of time, and that means overtime.

"You never know, but we should be OK even with this cut," Schember said.

Erie Bureau of Police Chief Dan Spizarny, in a previous interview with the Erie Times-News, said he and other city officials anticipated that City Council might look to make cuts in the police overtime budget, so the department was prepared to discuss options with City Council and the Schember administration.

Garbage/sewer fees to increase in 2024

City Council on Wednesday night approved Schember's proposed garbage/sewer rate increases in separate votes.

The sewer increase will boost the average city residential customer's sewer rates from roughly $340 a year to $348, or by roughly 2.5%, according to Lisa Gomersall, the city's finance director. The proposed garbage rate increase, Gomersall said, would boost an average residential customer's yearly fees by 5.6%, to $288 from the current $272.

Schember's 2023 budget also did not include a property tax increase, but it included garbage and sewer fee hikes that collectively generated about $1.8 million for the city.

They were the city’s first sewer rate increase since 2019 and the first garbage rate hike since 2020. In previous interviews, Schember has said the sewer and garbage fee increases are necessary because of rising costs related to those two services, including higher tipping fees at Lake View Landfill in Summit Township.

Tipping fees are paid by anyone who disposes of waste at a landfill.

Council President Chuck Nelson and colleagues Maurice Troop, Michael Keys, Jasmine Flores and Susannah Faulkner voted for both increases.

Councilman Ed Brzezinski, a frequent critic of such fee increases, voted against both the sewer and garbage hikes, calling them "a backdoor tax."

Councilman Mel Witherspoon voted against the garbage fee increase.

What other financial adjustments were made?

Other budget moves made by Schember’s administration, with City Council’s OK, include but were not limited to:

• Factoring in a $500,000 federal grant earmarked for the city’s Police Athletic League, which focuses on tutoring, mentoring and recreational programs aimed at building positive relationships between city youth and police officers. City officials received notification of the grant award after much of Schember’s preliminary budget proposal had already been prepared, said Renee Lamis, Schember’s chief of staff. That grant will, among other things, allow the city to fund two police positions in 2024 that work closely with PAL, Lamis said.

• The city also plans to hire a $35,000-a-year civilian coordinator for the Police Athletic League using the grant funds, Lamis said.

• A $107,000 reimbursement adjustment related to Community Development Block Grant funding. That adjustment will cover the 2024 salary of Debra Smith, the city's economic development director.

• An $80,000 combined adjustment in deferred compensation for police/fire overtime.

• Including $68,750 in grant revenue recently awarded by the state’s Neighborhood Assistance Program, a tax credit program allows businesses to directly invest in community development projects and/or nonprofits. The money will be used within the city’s Love Your Block program, a community improvement initiative.

• The hiring of a new code enforcement officer at a $63,000 yearly salary. City officials said the office is understaffed.

• Hiring a new full-time employee, at $63,000 annually, to help coordinate city services such as the issuance of special events permits.

• Reducing city funding for Community Access Media by $25,000. CAM will now receive $100,000 from the city in 2024.

• A nearly $9,000 increase in Gomersall’s salary. She will now earn $92,000 as finance director in 2024.

Housing plan funding slashed

City Council also agreed to give Schember’s administration $50,000 in the 2024 budget to create a long-range citywide housing strategy, with the help of a consultant. Schember’s administration had been seeking $100,000.

"We will look for matching funds," Lamis said.

Schember's administration wants the housing strategy to examine issues such as affordable housing, homelessness, blight, homeownership rates, workforce-related housing and how much market-rate housing the city currently has.

The city also wants to look at the best way to establish a regional housing court, which could have jurisdiction over the region's criminal and/or civil issues regarding housing, building and fire codes; zoning; health code violations; and landlord-tenant disputes.

Contact Kevin Flowers at kflowers@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ETNflowers.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: City of Erie's $102 million, 2024 budget includes garbage/sewer hikes