After announcing early in September the 2009 budget would be the most difficult he has ever seen, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz unveiled the final product to City Council members just before their meeting Tuesday night.

The budget uses $3.3 million from the city’s rainy day fund, which is just higher than the average of $2.9 million.

“We didn’t dip too heavily into the fund balance, the rainy day fund,” Cieslewicz said. “I think $3.3 million is responsible, but I don’t want to go much beyond that.”

Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said he thinks the city “dodged a bullet or two” where significant cuts could have been made.

“At first glance, [the budget] appears to be a status quo budget that will not have any real negative impacts on downtown residents,” Verveer said.

The Downtown Safety Initiative, which provides $100,000 to the police department for extra patrols during bar time Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights “to provide an insurance to violent crime,” did not see any cuts.

Of all the expenditure increases, 28 percent of them are defined as discretionary increases, including things like expanding Madison’s police force and increasing fire department services and resources.

In addition to increasing bus fares, Cieslewicz proposed changing large item garbage removal to a biweekly service rather than a weekly service to save money.

“They had promised us that if we do go along with this cut in service … the city would continue to have extra around-the-clock pickup during student move-in and move-out,” Verveer said.

Another cut Verveer said may affect students is the mayor’s proposal to cut positions in the city’s building inspection division.

“A lot of campus-area landlords do the bare minimum,” Verveer said. “It’s only because of the building inspectors that they stay on their toes.”

Verveer said he does not think this is the year to add extra building inspectors, but he hopes the cuts will ultimately not happen.

The budget includes the elimination of about 21 positions in city government, but Cieslewicz said they added about the same number in new positions, therefore there is actually a 3.7 increase in positions.

“At the end of the day what we really did was shift priorities,” Cieslewicz said.

Verveer said the budget does include the addition of three new parking enforcement positions for downtown, but this cost would be offset by the proposed increase in parking fines

“In 2007, the city brought in almost $5 million in parking fines,” Verveer said, adding the mayor projects a $350,000 increase in that revenue this year.

The faltering economy is evident in this year’s tight budget, which accounts for a 40 percent increase in fuel costs, a $1.25 million decrease in investment earnings and a 7 percent increase in health care costs.

“We had estimated 10 percent (in health care costs), that’s the 10-year average,” Cieslewicz said. “It came in at 7 (percent).”

In addition, Cieslewicz asked all city agencies to submit a budget earlier this year with cuts totaling 5 percent. In his presentation to council, he said he accepted more than 50 of those cut proposals and the total cuts equaled $1.3 million.

Cieslewicz said he developed his budget by making conservative assumptions, focusing on priorities and looking for ways to enhance revenue.