Just a few months ago, the city approved a balanced budget- $950 million of your tax money for this fiscal year.

But we’re now learning of two big questions that still remain in order to determine whether that balance was truly achieved.

City Council Finance Chair John Crescimbeni tells WOKV the first big question is whether the city achieved the amount of savings which had been projected from last year’s budget.

“We could end up short some money in this year’s budget because we underestimated or we could have some surplus dollars,” he says.

The final figure on how exactly that lines up is due out at the end of this month.

A more recent concern, however, is a new pending lawsuit over fire inspections.

“This year’s budget was predicated on ramping up what we perceived to be a shortfall in our fire and safety inspections,” he says.

Crescimbeni says the city and JFRD were in favor of the increase in inspections because of the gap that currently existed in efforts to ensure the safety of buildings and people inside them.  The increase in inspections comes with an increase in fees which the city used toward revenue projections to help balance the budget.

Several business owners, however, have now come forward against that increase because of the larger payout on their behalf.

“If that lawsuit proves or results in some sort of finding that fire inspections aren’t legal or you can’t do them as frequently as we’d like to do, we’ve gunna have to make an adjustment to this year’s budget,” Crescimbeni says.

And when that cloud is hanging over a budget that already resulted in cuts to right-of-way mowing, library hours and community resource officers- among other things- Crescimbeni says the city could be in trouble in the next fiscal year.

“Buckle down and get prepared for a ‘worst case scenario’ in next year’s budget,” he says.

Crescimbeni says revenue is likely to continue falling, which will mean more cuts looming ahead, and he is preparing for the next year to be as challenging, if not more, than the struggle over the budget now in place.