YOUNGSTOWN — With city council having until March 31 to pass the 2024 annual budget, Finance Director Kyle Miasek said the city’s finances are in the best shape they’ve been in years.

Miasek told council Thursday at the start of budget hearings that the general fund began 2024 with a surplus of about $3.4 million.

“We’re not accustomed to having” that high of a general fund surplus, he said. “You go back four or five years ago, you were lucky if this was $300,000, $400,000.”

The city has grown its revenue in recent years from federal COVID-19 funds, particularly the $82.8 million it received from the American Rescue Plan, while seeing an increase in income tax revenue and being careful with how it spends money, Miasek said.

“We’re in a much more comfortable place to make (financial) decisions than we were in the past,” Miasek said.

Miasek still is meeting with department heads and council members on the budget.

The environmental sanitation fund, which gets its money from garbage collection fees, was having trouble as recently as 2022.

But it spent about $500,000 less in 2023 than what was budgeted and started this year with a $1.6 million surplus.

The city was using the money from that fund to pay for housing demolition projects, but between a state grant given to the Mahoning County Land Bank and $3 million in ARP funds, the environmental sanitation fund didn’t spend anything on demolition in 2023.

Also, Miasek said, with all the vacant structures that have and will be torn down, there will be less of a need in the future for that fund to pay for demolitions.

The city’s wastewater fund started the year with a surplus of nearly $28 million and the water fund had a surplus of about $6.7 million.

The water fund has grown because the city four years ago added $10 per month to water bills of city residents and reduced the environmental sanitation fund by the same amount. It was done at the time to help the water fund, which was struggling.

INCOME TAX

The city ended 2023 with $52,481,100 from its 2.75% income tax and business profit tax. That’s an increase of 3.15% from the $50,879,800 the city collected in 2022. Miasek had predicted a 2.4% increase.

It was a record high income tax collection amount for the city.

Miasek said he expected an increase this year, but it wouldn’t be as high of a percentage as last year. He anticipated an increase of about 1.5% to 1.7% in 2024 though that could change.

“We had year-over-year growth and it exceeded my forecast, but the pattern is economic wage growth is slowing down in the area,” Miasek said. “A better indicator would be if we could see job growth.”

The increase is because people are getting paid more in salary and not because companies in the city are adding jobs, he explained.