City Council members said they were confident in the quality of the budget. The council commended the financial department on its ability to continue upkeep services for residents of East Lansing while still balancing the budget.

“Their ability to cut services and have the city not feel (the cuts) is a pretty incredible thing,” Mayor Pro Tem Diane Goddeeris said.

The budget increased about $28 million from last year, mostly because of the City Center II project, City Budget and Accounting Administrator Mike Birchmeier said.

City Center II, the building project that will be enclosed by Abbot Road, Grand River Avenue and Valley Court Park, as well as other construction projects, caused the budget to increase by about 42 percent from 2008-09.

Despite the total budget increase, a number of financial cuts were made for the coming fiscal year, City Finance Director Mary Haskell said. The city had to reduce the size of the general fund by $95,000, partly because of state budget cuts, she added.

“We made drastic cuts to overtime, capital improvement expenditures and we reduced the emergency sidewalk repair program,” she said. “We won’t know if there are further cuts until later in the new fiscal year when the state decides what other cuts they will take.”

Currently, about 20 percent of the general fund for the city comes from state funding. A large cut from the state could cause potential damage to all departments in the city.

“Until we know the amount of money that the state will give us, we don’t know what problems that could cause,” Birchmeier said.

The state must approve its budget by October.

The emergency sidewalk repair program is one program that will see funding reductions and could affect residents. The program fixes sidewalks in the city that are deemed hazardous.

Todd Sneathen, director of public works, said approximately $40,000 has been cut from that budget, which is about a 17 percent decrease.

“What it affects is the amount of sidewalk we’re able to complete with the program,” he said. “It means we don’t have the ability to repair about two blocks of sidewalk.”

Some effects to the city could include cutting overtime for both the police and fire departments. Although this would mean less hours, the city plans to maintain the same standard of safety.

“All departments cut back overtime,” said Haskell. “Hopefully it won’t affect the departments too critically, but we’ll certainly not jeopardize citizen safety.”