WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAU) — The City of Wausau’s budget is apparently not in the deep deficit trouble that was originally projected. That’s according to Finance Committee Chairman David Oberbeck, who says they still have to make some cuts to balance the budget, but 2016 is already looking better now than it did earlier this summer. “We saw projections of 2.6 million, and now it’s down to 800-thousand (dollars deficit), so I think that’s something that’s a good thing if we start going through the budget, figuring it out, I think that’s a good thing that we come down to more specific numbers.”
Oberbeck says he and other council members have been digging into the city’s revenue and expense figures, and they’ve received updated projections from city departments. “If I look at the revenue projections as far as a slope with our expenditures and a slope of our revenues over the last four years, it’s fairly consistent, so how we were that far off? We’ve got to see that, and we’ll be talking about that this Thursday as far as an initial discussion on what those projections were and what they are now.”
The Wausau Finance Committee has the first of three special budget work meetings at 5 o’clock Wednesday. The other two are Thursday and next Tuesday at the same time. By Tuesday night, the Finance Committee hopes to have a final budget package ready for the city council.
