Mayor Paul Soglin and the city’s Board of Estimates reviewed necessary changes to next year’s municipal budget Monday and considered the consequences these changes could have on city residents and businesses.

Soglin said in a message to City Council earlier this week that the state of the economy means 2012 will bring major budget cuts.

“[We] need to make drastic cuts to our borrowing in order to reduce the impact of increasing debt service on the operating budget,” he said.

The need for these cuts comes from an increasing difference between the city’s expenditures and its revenue. 

Financial Director David Schmiedicke said that while the city’s expenditures are up 0.9 percent, its revenues are down 6.1 percent.

The recession has also resulted in an overall decrease in the value of Madison property. Schmiedicke said property values have fallen each year since 2009 by about 1 percent annually.

The city has taken on multiple new items for 2012 that will be covered by the city budget, including traffic engineering, improvements to city parks and streets and a heroin and opiates task force, Schmiedicke said.

Soglin said one of his primary goals in creating next year’s budget was to avoid layoffs and the creation of furlough days. While mass layoffs were avoided, Schmiedicke said 15 city jobs are being eliminated, nine of which are public health jobs.

The preservation of most jobs and services, however, has resulted in other impacts on Madison residents and the city.

Projected property taxes for 2012 will increase by 3.24 percent, or $66, for the average home, Soglin said.

Various development and building-related fees will also increase, with estimated additional revenue for the city adding up to $193,000, Schmiedicke said.

Controversy has broken out throughout the past several weeks concerning the creation of 20 furlough days for the Madison City Attorneys Association. Assistant City Attorney Lara Mainella encouraged the reduction or elimination of these furlough days.

“City attorneys provide a valuable and necessary service. It would be to the detriment of the city for us to not be working for 20 days,” she said. “We’re interested in discussing a fair and just solution to the budget.”

Mainella said the furlough days would result in an average pay cut of $7,714 throughout the year for each of the association’s 14 assistant city attorneys.

The Board of Estimates agreed to discuss the situation and see if amendments could be made.

“All of us respect and use the work of the City Attorney’s Office – none of us are interested in less work output,” Ald. Mark Clear, District 19, said.

Deb Archer, president and CEO of the Greater Madison Convention and Visitors Bureau, discussed plans to increase revenue for the city.

“We need to ramp up whatever we think the highest return on investment is. That means advertising [and] getting the word out about Madison as a destination,” she said.

Archer said she is optimistic about the state of business in Madison and the city’s ability to recover from the economic downturn. She said she expects to see a 4 or 5  percent increase in business during the next few years – an improvement over last year’s 3 percent increase.

The Board of Estimates’ amendments to the budget are due Oct.19 at noon.