Philadelphia is still in budget hole

Philadelphia is on track to end the fiscal year more than thirty million dollars in the red.

Philadelphia is on track to end the fiscal year more than thirty million dollars in the red. That’s a lot smaller than a $108 million hole announced a year ago, but it’s evidence the city still faces a tough financial picture.

Listen:
[audio: 091110lfrevenue.mp3]

The good news is that business taxes and real estate transfer tax revenues look like they’ll be higher than the city expected. But there’s bad news too.

Here’s Budget Director Steve Agostini.

Agostini: It is true we are going to see greater revenues in transfer taxes and in our business privilege taxes but it isn’t sufficient to off-set the loss in the wage taxes and then when you add to that some additional expenditures – not sizable – but enough to begin to add up in terms of police expenditures and some lost state funding for our Department of Human Services, it contributes and adds up to our $31 million projected shortfall.

Agostini says he’s reviewing hiring requests and is going to look at other areas of the budget for savings.

He says he has asked city departments to cut their budgets for next year by seven and a half percent.