The Champaign City Council convened Tuesday night for a study session to discuss the recommended budget strategy proposed by city manager Steve Carter. It has been said that the cuts presented to the council are part of the most challenging budget in 40 years.

A large audience attended the meeting at City Hall, including several members of the fire and police departments. The meeting began with Carter issuing an open statement to the audience in which he explained the city’s need to cut spending because of the $2 million deficit the city faces.

“Costs and inflation are rising faster than our revenue and quick fixes will not solve the problem,” Carter said.

Carter added that the city has provided great facilities and employees for the citizens. However, he said the trend in population shows the city actually trending downward over the past couple of years despite the increase in service employees at that time.

The council listened to reports from finance director Richard Schnuer alongside the department heads of public works, the fire department and police department. Each department head spoke about how the cuts would make them a more reactive staff as opposed to being proactive as they had tried to be in the past and would lengthen the response times of public complaints.

“We need to know where we’re going to be in 5 to 10 years, so as we go forward looking to create something of vision for Champaign,” said Will Kyles, council member for District 1.

He also added that there are certain parts of the proposal he does not support, including cuts to the police department front desk and to the fire department.

Tom Bruno, council member-at-large, said that he doesn’t believe the fire department will become substandard with a reduction in firefighters.

“There isn’t always an easy solution to life’s problems, but it wasn’t that long ago that some of these fire stations were not present,” Bruno said. “As painful as these proposed cuts are, I think they are necessary.”

Marci Dodds, council member for District 4, agreed for the most part with Bruno.

“We need to balance our current needs as well as our expenditures and I think these cuts do that,” Dodds said.

Members of the council also expressed no interest in putting a long time deficit on the city by borrowing money which raised questions from the council about a proposed pension obligation bond.

“I would hate to be on the council that made it difficult for the councils of the next 25 years,” said Michael LaDue, council member for District 2.