TOLEDO, Ohio — From safety in our community, to the streets you drive on every day; balancing the City of Toledo's budget is more than just managing how to spend around $839 million.
"There's no question that this budget invests substantial resources into fixing residential roads," Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said.
Toledo will see a boost to its checkbook come next year. Voters approved a new income tax, strictly for roads.
Kapszukiewicz says he anticipates crews will be able to pave, patch and fix five times as many neighborhood streets.
The proposed city budget is balanced.
However, Councilperson and Certified Public Accountant Katie Moline is concerned millions of dollars are still coming from the city's rainy day fund as opposed to tax income.
She acknowledges a global pandemic is an emergency, but worried that amount this budget calls for gives the city a smaller cushion for future surprises.
"We have a massive structural deficit, we are using 22.9 million dollars from our rainy day fund for this budget and that's very concerning to me, because I think it's very hard to build our future or practice financial responsibility when we're using non-recurring sources of revenue," Moline said.
Toledo saw hundreds of workers furloughed, dozens of jobs cut and new safety positions put on hold as the city delayed its annual police and fire classes.
Both will be back under this proposed 2021 budget .
"When I became Mayor in January of 2018, we had 600 police officers on the street. Right now we have about 620 or so," Kapszukiewicz said.
The mayor expects that number to increase with a 50 cadet firefighter class and 31 recruit police class slated for next year.
That puts TPD up 30 new officers since January of 2018.
Kapszukiewicz still believes Toledo should have another 30 based on its size.