LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After weeks of debate and testimony, Louisville Metro's budget is moving forward - with a different look from Mayor Greg Fischer's original spending plan.
Tasked with finding $25 million in savings in the budget for the upcoming fiscal year, it was no secret that this budget was going to hurt.
"This is a tough budget," Councilman Bill Hollander, D.-District 9, said. "People are going to be losing their jobs. I think the public will see the impacts of the cuts."
Some of the mayor's cuts, including the closing of the city's four public pools, cannot be reversed in the upcoming budget. Several council members said they were not consulted before that decision was made, and because it was too late to prepare the pools for the summer, it did not make sense to include them in the budget amendment.
"To those services we weren't able to restore, if we had had an opportunity to have this conversation before those cuts were made, I think we would be having a different conversation," Councilman Kevin Kramer, R.-District 11, said.
But several of the items on the chopping block in the mayor's budget proposal would come back - at least for the upcoming year - in the budget committee's amended plan.
Some of the amendments made to the mayor's budget includes:
Louisville Metro Police will get $283,200 in funding to have their recruit class begin in February 2020 instead of March 2020 along with an additional $50,000 increase in recruit allowance.
The library system will have an increase of $1,00,200 to restore full library hours and an additional $412,500 to reopen the Middletown Branch library.
The council is also allocating to continue yard waste and recycling collections on a weekly basis, as opposed to every other week, finding the funds by eliminating one position through attrition and by reducing a recycling contract.
The budget will also allocate funding to open Sun Valley and Algonquin pools next summer. The funds will not open the public pools this year but some councilmembers, including Councilwoman Cindi Fowler, D.-District 14, are working on trying to open some pools for part of the summer. Fowler said she is going to use her discretionary funds on painting and repairing Sun Valley pool and recruiting and training lifeguards.
The amended budget still has the more than $25 million in cuts, which means other areas are seeing less of the money that is going to fund the other programs. The Office of Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods will lose $1,022,600 with the elimination of three of its four sites.
The budget committee is also looking at around $1.3 million in savings by asking the Commonwealth of Kentucky to take over Youth Detention Services. Jefferson County is the only county in Kentucky that operates its own YDS, and the council is requesting that the state will continue to keep its operation in the county.
"I remember the grandmother who came and testified and asked us not to do this because she frequently goes and sees her grandson, grandchild, and doesn't know she'll be able to do that," Hollander said. "So there are costs to all these cuts."
Hollander said the budget issue, which was brought on by rising pension costs in the state of Kentucky, will continue in the years to come.
"Some of the things people might say we were able to save this year may be back on the chopping block next year," he said. "But we'll do the best we can next year and the year after that and the year after that."
The amended budget will be presented before the full Metro Council on Tuesday.
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