Toledo’s next city budget is due to City Council members on Sunday, and the question hanging over it is whether layoffs make it into the final version after voters defeated the city’s income tax proposal, 13abc (WTVG) reported.
The stakes were spelled out before the Nov. 3 election. A working budget without the added revenue contemplated approximately 73 layoffs — currently filled positions, not vacancies, with roughly half of them coming from the police and fire departments — Deputy Mayor Abby Arnold told a council finance committee on Oct. 28, in reporting by the Toledo Free Press.
Issue 16, the quarter-percent income tax increase on the ballot, would have changed that math. It was projected to bring in about $20 million in additional income taxes in 2027, growing to $25 million in 2028 and 2029, Deputy Finance Director Melanie Campbell told the committee, according to the Toledo Free Press, with $5 million of the plan dedicated to preventing police and fire layoffs.
Toledo Firefighters Local 92 President Joe Cira addressed the same committee and indicated the fire department would be in dire straits without the measure, the Toledo Free Press reported, as firefighters warned that roughly 40 positions between police and fire were at risk.
The budget pressure is not only about the ballot. City finance figures through September showed business income taxes down 31.2 percent from 2025 to 2026 — a difference of more than $7 million — and Commissioner of Taxation Jay Zawisza told the committee the auto industry was the area of most concern, the Toledo Free Press reported.
The two paths were laid out side by side before the election so residents could see the choice plainly, the Toledo Free Press reported: with the tax, the city planned added revenue dedicated to neighborhood safety and police and fire operations; without it, the working budget absorbed the shortfall in part through the contemplated layoffs. Council members, several of whom heard the warnings directly from the fire union and the administration in late October, now own the final decision.
What happens next: the administration’s budget reaches council members Sunday, and council will decide in the coming weeks whether the layoffs contemplated in the no-new-revenue version stay in the final spending plan or are taken out some other way.
Photo: MrJacon000, CC BY-SA