CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The City staff's plan to balance the city budget after a $25 million tax revenue shortfall involves moving money around, cutting positions and eliminating capital improvement projects.
The shortfall comes after council doubled the homestead exemption tax break and did away with the street user fee.
The budget is also being impacted by several mandates that have to be funded totaling $9 million.
City Manager Peter Zanoni put on a press briefing Monday to help the media understand what all the City is looking to do to balance the budget.
The briefing revealed that all but four city departments could experience cuts to their budget. This could be an open position that goes unfilled or jobs that will be eliminated like in code enforcement.
Even the mayor's and city manager's offices are looking to make cuts to their budgets in an effort to balance the financial book.
"We have to cut spending to match revenues that are coming in this next fiscal year year," Zanoni said. "Just to reduce them just to reduce them wouldn’t be a good idea, what we need to do is invest even more."
The general fund budget is looking at a 2.6 percent cut compared to 2024. In the proposed budget, police and fire won’t be seeing any cuts while most city department's, like code enforcement, will feel the blade of the budget ax.
"Some of the reductions we’re recommending in code does include code officers; a few code officer positions," Zanoni said.
3NEWS asked two councilmembers what they thought about the funding issues facing the city.
"It’s kind of tough being in the position that we’re in, we should have never been here in the first place, but basically we have to focus on the immediate needs," Councilman Michael Hunter said.
Councilman Jim Klein said he expects slight cuts across the board to balance the impact.
"We’re going to have to look at making some slight cuts," he said. "I think they’re talking about doing that citywide; ease the pain and spread it out as much as possible so no one department gets hit to hard with that."
The City will be holding city council budget workshops, community meetings and public hearings all in advance of council having to pass the budget on second reading on Sept. 10.