Unfortunately, this depicts tax revenue, not the budget deficit

It’s not big news that Philadelphia’s budget deficit is a bit worse than it was when Mayor Nutter kicked off his re-balancing act back in November.  As we’ve known ever since Mayor Nutter spoke at the town hall meeting in northeast Philadelphia back in early December, the budget gap that kicked off the whole re-balancing process had gotten far worse than it did when Nutter’s new budget plan was written.  What we haven’t known for sure is how much worse.

It seems that pretty soon, we’ll know.

As Mayor Nutter said to WHYY’s Brenda Jorett this morning and the Daily News yesterday, the really bad news is coming and it’s probably going to be the kind of bad news that makes closing 11 library branches seem like the good ole’ days.  Though 5-year projections are always a little iffy - go back two or three years and see what the 5-year plan predicted for this year - they are what the city is legally bound to use when making budgeting decisions.  But if the vague notion of where the city might be 5 years from now still isn’t enough evidence that things are bad enough to merit drastic action, how about the monthly reports that compares much revenue is actually coming in with what was expected?

So the bad news is coming soon, probably by the end of the week.  We’ve had a few clues about how bad it will be, including Councilman Jim Kenney’s recent blog commenting that predicts “a $1.5-$1.8 billion hole in the five year plan.”  And he’s a guy who probably gets his information from a pretty high up source.

Though this may be a morbid little game to play, given what these budget troubles are going to mean to everyone who pays taxes, uses services or works for the city, take a crack at predicting the 5-year budget gap in the comments section of this post.  No ranges like the Councilman, please.  Try to hit it to the $100 million.