New Philadelphia City Council comes up with balanced budget; long-term fix still needed

Jon Baker, The Times-Reporter
·2 min read

NEW PHILADELPHIA ‒ The city has crafted a balanced budget for 2024 by shifting money from the cemetery fund to the general fund, but officials warn that it does not fix New Philadelphia's money problems.

"You cannot keep passing budgets like this. You've got to do something different," Auditor Beth Gundy warned council members during the recent finance committee meeting.

To fill a projected revenue shortfall of around $350,000, Mayor Joel Day and department heads came up with $78,500 in spending cuts, and $280,000 will be shifted from the cemetery fund to the general fund. There was a surplus in the cemetery fund. Transferring that money still leaves $220,000 in that fund.

Steve Rippeth
Steve Rippeth

"We understand the choices that we made weren't easy," said Councilman Steve Rippeth, who chairs the finance committee. "We didn't take them lightly, either. Taking money out of the cemetery fund wasn't something we did just willy-nilly. We believe in talking with the mayor that we can make the budget there work."

He applauded the work of Day, Gundy, Law Director Marvin Fete, department heads and Rea & Associates, Inc., in putting together a plan.

He noted that with this budget, no employees will lose their jobs, services won't be cut and the income tax won't have to be increased.

A couple of years ago, council increased the amount of money going from income tax revenue into the cemetery fund from 3% to 7%. At that time, the city's East Avenue Cemetery was nearly full, and the only money coming into the cemetery fund came from the sale of one or two lots a year. Now, with the opening of the new Schoenbrunn Meadows Cemetery on Delaware Drive SE, the city is receiving about $100,000 a year in sales of cemetery lots.

'Kicking the can down the road'

Councilman Kris Kreinbihl said he still sees a problem with the budget. "I think we're kicking the can down the road, when I look at this," he said. "This solves it for 2024, but I worry that we're putting ourselves in a bind for 2025."

"The problem is not fixed down the road," Rippeth responded. "We acknowledged that in our discussions. This was about getting us through 2024. There are things that we're working on down the road, trying to get a reinstatement of some of the (state) local government funds that have been taken away, looking at some other revenue streams. I see this as a two-step process. We have to have a budget that we can pass, that's a workable budget. Doing this gets us to that point. Down the road, this is not a solution. This is a Band-Aid, not an operation to fix it."

The budget has yet to be approved by the full council.

Reach Jon at 330-364-8415 or at jon.baker@timesreporter.com.

This article originally appeared on The Times-Reporter: New Philadelphia takes money from cemetery funds to balance budget