What happened at Monday's committee meetings of Stow City Council

Tonight, the administration laid out its proposal for the 2013 budget.

I have individually reviewed every line of the budget and I’m still in the process of completing my own analysis. In the mean time, here are some facts:

The proposed budget has a deficit of $264K (i.e. spending exceeds revenue by $264K). But that number does not tell the entire story. The proposal also transfers $875K from the roads fund and $275K from the group health fund. Therefore, the mayor’s budget has an effective deficit of $1.414 million.

If you want to look at the bright side, last year, the city’s budget planned for a $693K deficit, and it wound up being $133K. Income tax receipts were better than we expected. That budget passed by a 4-3 vote (Riehl, Lowdermilk and I voted “no”).

My main concern is the effect on our roads. Over the past five years, the city’s budgets have taken $4,705,000 from the roads fund. That is money that should rightfully be used to repave our roads and improve our infrastructure. We have also been robbing the roads fund to pay for the Fox Den debt — about $375K per year.

We have heard a lot about the recession hurting our revenue (i.e., reducing our income tax receipts). That sounds good, but it’s not true. We had more income tax revenue in 2013 than any year in the city’s history. It goes to show: Stow has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. The city projects that income tax receipts will increase again this year by 1.8 percent.

This positive data is consistent with Stow’s unemployment rate of 5.3 percent, which outpaces Summit County (6.2%), the State of Ohio (7%) and the United States (7.7%).

I will have more on the budget as the month of March continues. We will likely hold a final vote on the budget on March 28.

City council will meet at 7 p.m. Thursday.