Philadelphia closed books with tiny surplus

Philadelphia has ended its fiscal year with a tiny surplus, but planned cuts will still go through.

Finance Director Rob Dubow says audits show the city of Philadelphia had $100,000 surplus when the fiscal year ended June 30th.

“It’s a big improvement over the last two years when we had negative fund balances of over $100 million.  It’s a result of the all the actions we have taken over the last couple of years to bring ourselves back into balance, a lot of budget cuts which have been painful for us and for citizens,” said Dubow.

Philadelphia’s budget is about $3.9 billion.

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Dubow says the city is still having fiscal problems and expects to implement more cuts soon.  He says the Occupy Philadelphia encampment isn’t helping.

“The latest costs we’ve seen are about $100,000 a week, so obviously if that lasts for a long time that’s a cost we’ll have to factor in to how we keep our budget balanced,” said Dubow.

City department heads–except for public safety–have submitted plans of how to cut an extra two percent from their budgets.

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