Duncanville City Council wrangles with budget

by Brian Allen of Best Southwest Citizen

Faced with sales tax and property tax revenue declines, Duncanville found itself facing a $1 million budget shortfall. At the August 18 city council meeting, City Manager Kent Cagle described some of the tough cuts that allowed staff to balance the budget.

One of the most publicized moves has been the city’s mandatory furlough program for employees. Cagle calls the furlough one of the final steps before layoffs become necessary.

It’s not just sales and property taxes that are down. Hotel/motel tax revenues have taken a dip and that hit the Chamber of Commerce Visitors Center and International Museum of Cultures hard. Both organizations had to be completely removed from the budget. Duncanville Community Theatre is still in, but will receive around $4,000 as opposed to the $30,000 it received in Fiscal Year 2008-09.

Duncanville will also have to cut back on street maintenance for a year. But Mayor David Green said that is only temporary.

“That doesn’t mean we’re not going to do a little bit of street maintenance,” Green said. “We’re going to do it where it’s necessary. That means that we had a program in place to keep a level of street maintenance so everything would be kept in tip-top shape. It won’t be kept quite the same level, but where there’s street repairs that need to be made we’ll still be making them.”