Danville city council holding last scheduled budget workshop

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DANVILLE (WSLS10) - For the moment, Danville's proposed budget is balanced at $271 million.

But council members will have to work to keep it that way as they discuss budgets for the utilities and parks and recreation departments Tuesday night, because there is one outlying cost that has not yet been accounted for.

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Danville Public Schools have requested roughly $2.6 million more in funding than what the city committed to giving the school system in December.

The money is needed to pay for the roughly $4.1 million in new initiatives and state and federal mandates.

Superintendent Dr. Stanley Jones says they had a lot of unknown variables in their budget which is why it took until a week ago to figure out how much additional funding the district needed.

"An unknown variable was what the actual cost of health insurance would be," Dr. Jones explained.

One proposed new initiative is a 2.5% raise for employees, which would cost the district about $955,000.

The state and federal mandates total about $1.85 million.

Larking says this last minute request could make budget discussions more challenging.

"If city council asks staff for assistance on how we could either meet that need or what it would take to make that possible then we'll be happy to provide that information," he explained.

Dr. Jones says he and district leaders are continuing to work on the district's budget are not sitting idly by and waiting for city council to make a decision.

If council wants to accommodate any portion of the request, cuts would have to be made to other areas of the city's budget.