City withdraws million dollar transfer to shore up debt

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - A new year, but the same old budget troubles continue for the city of Terre Haute. Last year the city was able to move funds to shore up most of the negative balance in the city General Fund.
    
But the council tabled an additional transfer, that the mayor said would have brought the city into 2013 with a zero balance. Thursday, they revisited that proposal.
    
According to Mayor Duke Bennett the deficit in the general fund could be solved with two million dollars. But, his solution used funds he said were excess from the city Economic Development Income Tax (or EDIT fund).
    
The city council felt those funds should be used just for economic development. So the move was tabled.
    
Fast forward to Thursday, the year's first regular meeting of the city council.

The mayor asked that the EDIT money transfer proposal be withdrawn. That way the money would still be available to deal with this year's financial troubles.

He said with the latest reports on the loss of property value from the state, the city could be in trouble with even less property taxes to collect.
    
But how much revenue is down, they're still waiting to find out.

“There's a couple of other steps that have to occur. They have to run (the new property numbers) through a formula to determine exactly what your property taxes are and that won't happen for a couple more months,” Mayor Bennett explained.

“We know assessed values are down so we know we will lose income through the city of Terre Haute but by how much we don't know."
    
So what does all that mean for the city?

Once the city knows how short their income is from their proposed budget, they could have to cut services, programs, and ultimately jobs.