What does this financial forecast mean?
Only bad options at this point.
There was a lot of bad news in the five-year financial forecast released by the city budget office yesterday. That's no surprise.
But it wasn't all bad. There is some very encouraging data on sales tax revenue that could help to prevent some social services cuts in an otherwise brutal budget.
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Let's start with the forecast for the general fund in the upcoming FY 2026-27:
It may not be described as a "budget recommendation" yet, but that's essentially how I interpret it. This forecast is the product of the investments and cuts City Manager T.C. Broadnax envisions.
As you can see, public safety (police, fire, EMS, forensics) accounts for 66% of the total budget. Meanwhile, the categories of spending that receive the most attention from angry Twitter accounts are extremely small.
