After two weeks of debate and negotiation with Akron City Council, Mayor Shammas Malik’s first operating budget is finally set.
The $815 million budget was formally approved by all City Council members on Monday night, days after Malik and City Council President Margo Sommerville announced an agreement to cut the size of the mayor’s office and to distribute the money elsewhere.
“I think the budget process always has give and take,” Malik said in an interview after Monday’s council meeting. “I’m not surprised that council had questions and concerns and feedback, and I’ve been on the other end pushing the administration to make amendments, so I understand that too. But I’m proud of the budget that we were able to pass unanimously through council tonight.”
The “give” Malik was referring to was his willingness to cut three unfilled roles from his office – data transparency strategist, public engagement strategist and environmental policy specialist – budgeted for $244,000.
The mayor’s office also announced that it budgeted $125,000 more than it will actually cost to demolish the Word Church and that the city’s property taxes were $131,000 lower than anticipated.
Compromise shifts some money to services
That $550,000 was moved elsewhere in the budget, appeasing City Council members enough to change their no votes to yes votes. As Director of Finance Steve Fricker explained during Monday’s Budget and Finance Committee meeting, the amendment shifts:
- $100,000 to the police budget, intended for overtime pay for “vice” policing in the city.
- $100,000 for animal control, within the Department of Neighborhood Assistance.
- $100,000 to the nuisance division of the Department of Neighborhood Assistance, “primarily for equipment and contract-type activities, for mowing and rubbish cleanups and those types of things,” Fricker said.
- $100,000 to the housing compliance division, for staffing and equipment.
- $90,000 to the Akron Municipal Court judge’s budget for a grants writer position.
- $50,000 to City Council’s Neighborhood Partnership Grant Program, so each ward has an extra $5,000 to distribute to community organizations.
- $10,000 to a “baby box” at Akron Children’s.
“I’ve been down here for a few years now, and this has been the best budget experience since I’ve been here,” said Ward 10’s Sharon Connor on Monday about the compromise that shifted money from the mayor’s office to the other departments. “… The transparency and community engagement on this budget was better than it’s ever been, and we are going to move the needle.”
The $550,000 compromise represents a small portion of the overall budget compared to the funding for the Akron Police Department and Akron Fire Departments. City Council approved funding for both departments at their highest staffing levels in decades: 488 uniformed police officers, up from 471 budgeted last year, and 402 uniformed firefighters and paramedics, up two budgeted positions from last year.
“We have a proactive [police] department and we should keep it that way,” said Ward 6 Council Member Brad McKitrick, defending the size of the APD against criticisms that too much was budgeted toward police.
APD and AFD make up a significant portion of the 2,055 budgeted full-time jobs with the city, up from 2,019 last year, with 69% of the general fund expenses going to labor costs. The overall budget is an increase of 1.2% from last year, with the difference made up by an increase in income tax and property tax revenues.
In this budget, Akron plans to spend $61 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, with nearly half going toward parks and public spaces. The city also plans to spend $7.5 million on both water main replacements and housing rehab programs, along with support for the city’s community development corporations. An additional $2 million will be spent to remove lead pipes, and $1.2 million will go toward violence intervention.
Prior to Malik and Sommerville’s agreement on Friday, the mayor’s first operating budget appeared to be opposed by a majority of City Council members. They took issue with the 23 full-time staff positions budgeted for the mayor’s office, believing it to be the largest and costliest administration in the city’s history.
Sommerville and Ward 8 Council Member James Hardy both told Signal Akron they couldn’t justify approving such a large mayor’s office when they believed other areas of city government are underfunded.
“It was very important for us to work on a budget amendment to ensure that we would have a budget that could be passed by the council,” Sommerville said during the council meeting.
Concerns raised about budget sustainability
“I have my vision, I’m very confident in my vision, and I believe very strongly in my vision,” Malik said after the meeting. “But I recognize that not everyone shares my vision, and so I accept that and I respect that. I don’t take a lot of this stuff personally. I want to get stuff done, so there were a couple nights where I had difficulty sleeping, but I didn’t take it personally, for the most part.”
Monday evening’s vote was unanimous, but Sommerville and Hardy expressed concerns about the long-term viability of the amount of spending in this year’s budget.
“I have concerns about sustainability and how we will sustain all of these positions,” Sommerville said. “And I think over time we will have to look at that, we will have to evaluate that. I also still have some concerns and I’m going to continue to advocate just as we invest in individuals working at the top, I want to make sure that we invest in those who are boots on the ground doing the work for us every single day.”
The council president said she wants to find funding to make part-time seasonal recreation workers full time, with health insurance.
“I want to echo President Sommerville’s concerns [about] long term sustainability and just keeping an eye on the bottom line here,” Hardy said. “A 20-plus [percent] increase in property taxes might be a good thing for the city’s general fund but it is a horrible thing for households in our city.… We can’t control how the economy does or does not grow, or contract, in our community. But we can control how we budget and how we prepare for all of those inevitabilities, and I want to make sure to the extent possible that we’re not adding additional burdens on our residents.”
After Monday night’s meeting, Malik said his budget is “fiscally responsible.”
“As every community works their way off of ARPA you have to think ‘OK, how are you going to pay for some of the things you paid for with ARPA?’” Malik said. “We’ve used some of that for revenue replacement, to help make our bottom line. But at the same time as we go forward we want to be as prudent as possible, and that’s why we’ve been aggressive looking at state and federal funding.”
Malik continued, “That’s why we’ve also been pretty conservative with how we’ve projected our budgets. When our income tax is growing 5%, we’re projecting 2%. It’s allowed us to build up a pretty healthy reserve. And then there’s also the ability to take a fine look at things we can afford to do and things we can’t afford to do. To me, we have to make investments in the future of our city government to make it more effective.”
