The full Cincinnati City Council Wednesday endorsed a plan for allocating the city's $19 million budget surplus from the last fiscal year.
About $12 million will go into the city's “rainy day” accounts, and the rest mostly goes to the police department for body cameras and other new technology.
Council Member Kevin Flynn tried to amend the plan to provide $1 million for a firefighter recruit class that starts in February. It would have come from money set aside for community programs in the city’s manager proposal.
Vice Mayor David Mann called that a “bogus issue.”
“If the SAFER grant is not given to us, we have the ability in a $370 million budget, with reserves of $37 million, to find easily $1 million,” Mann said.
City Manager Harry Black told city council money for the fire recruit class will be found.
“We will have a fire recruit class,” Black said. “In the event that the grant does not come through, we’re working on multiple contingencies to make certain that the appropriate funding is available when we need it to be available. Today is not that day. We don’t need it today.”
Cincinnati has applied for a federal grant to pay for the recruit class, but it's looking less likely the city will be receiving that funding.
The $19 million surplus is the result of higher than expected revenues and lower expenditures in the last fiscal year.
