The BET meeting contained the news that the city was going to see a higher budget surplus than anticipated last September. From teh hour:

Hamilton, while pleased with the 2006-07 surplus, described it as “not terribly unexpected.” He pointed to other aspects of the city’s financial performance, which he considers equally as important. They include a relatively small growth in total government expenditures.

“Total expenses for the entire city organization went from $276 million to $279. 8 million in ‘07,” Hamilton said. “The overall spending of the city went up by 1.5 percent. That’s a well-constrained expenditure growth.”

Constrained expenditures does not alone count for the surplus. The report neglects to follow up to the corollary of increased revenues coming in on things like the conveyance tax. I’m glad the Mayor and BET chairman Wilms are talking about strategic financial planning instead of the expedient tax relief mantra.

“That’s what Tom and I want to talk about, whether it would be for tax relief, or we can use it for some capital projects. If we could use it for capital projects, then we would not have to float (as many) new bonds,” Moccia said. But first “I want to sit down with Tom and the Board of Estimate.”
…
“As part of the policy, we did say that we were going to use $3.5 million from fund balance for next year’s budget. That’s the initial intention,” Wilms said. But “we need to see where the fund balance is, we need to see where operating revenues are. Certainly, one use of the fund balance is for tax-relief purposes when it’s part of an overall financial strategy. If we were to just arbitrarily use a large amount of fund balance for tax relief, it would keep taxes low that year but then we would hurt ourselves in the later years.”

source: The Hour, City finishes fiscal year with $3.3 million surplus, January 09, 2008