Bradford City is not anticipating a budget increase in 2021.

City Administrator Chris Lucco outlined the city’s overall budget at a work session Tuesday evening. However, he noted there are still unknowns, such as collective bargaining agreements, and he doesn’t know what the final budget will look like yet.

He indicated that he does not believe city officials will be scrambling to balance the budget this year, saying, “I’m hopeful that we are going to be in a better spot at the end of November than we were last year.”

In fact, Lucco believes the city may be able to eliminate the need for a tax anticipation loan by the end of 2021. He lauded the efforts by each department to be financially responsible.

“All the department heads have done fantastic,” Lucco added. “I think the old ‘It’s in the budget, I’m going to spend it’ attitude is gone at this point.”

Department heads gave highlights from 2020 and for their projected 2021 budgets at the meeting, which last just over two hours.

Chief Mike Ward started his report on the police department by saying, “This year has been like no other in the police department,” explaining it “has been an extremely trying time for the department and our officers.”

Multiple officers have been out due to injuries, and the department has been shorthanded.

Ward is asking for a budget increase of just under $50,000 for items including state-mandated training, special details due to public events, overtime for special investigations, oil and gas, new bullet-proof vests, maintenance fee for the computer fingerprint system, gas/electric and portable radios.

He is asking for money for one new patrol vehicle, too.

The budget for the following was reduced: crime scene/safety supplies, office supplies, postage, radio and telephone, and maintenance of office equipment has been lowered, and they reduced the cleaning services budget by having officers take over some of the cleaning.

Regarding property maintenance department spending, Lucco said there are no large increases expected in the department, just slight increases in salaries and fixed costs such as health insurance.

Under Health Department spending, Health Director Mike Cleveland said contractual items such as salary and health benefits go up a little bit every year.

Cleveland budgeted mandatory training as normal and very minimal supplies. Overtime is kept to a minimum in the department. There is emergency demolition funding set aside in case a structure needs to be taken down for safety reasons, but he explained they get reimbursed if the property owner has insurance. The costs of legal fees and postage are driven by how busy the department is with blighted properties.

Fire Department Eric Taylor said 2020 has also “been a challenging year for the Bradford City Fire Department.”

He noted the department made “a lot of sacrifices” for the 2020 budget — including postponing raises until 2021. Overtime was affected by the mandate to have five firefighters on all the time. Also, there was a temporary employee on for two years due to an employee being out with an injury.

On the ambulance side, the department is seeing fewer calls due to COVID-19 and are about 70 calls below where they were at this time last year.

Taylor is asking for an 8% increase in the fire department budget, with 84% of that for salaries, including the 2020 raises that were postponed. Other increases are for training, emergency overtime and vehicle maintenance for the aging fleet.

He is asking for about an 8% increase for the ambulance budget, too, to include employee costs, increased medication prices and vehicle maintenance.

Taylor is hopeful the department can get a new ambulance, too. He will look at getting grant money to help pay for a Horton brand ambulance, which he believes they will be able to use much longer than ones the city has purchased in recent years.

Electrician Dan Tyger said he is under budget for every line item so far this year. He is looking to spend $300 to $500 for bucket truck maintenance, as well as a little money on traffic lighting.

Tyger is asking for about the same budget as last year, he said.

Chip Comilla talked about the streets, refuse and parks departments. He said he is anticipating his 2021 budget to be $126,956.19 less than the 2020 projected budget. Also, he said his 2020 budget could come in more than $300,000 under the projected budget due to COVID-19.

However, Comilla explained it is hard to predict what the department will spend this winter, as big expenses in the winter months are weather dependent.

Under the refuse department, the packers are paid off as of this month, Comilla said, but he noted he wants to put money into the capital reserve account to lessen payments for future payments. The packers are in good shape right now.

He anticipates the overall budget for the public works department to be about the same in 2021 as 2020.

For the parks department, Comilla is requesting they purchase a new pick-up truck using liquid fuels funds. He has also submitted for grant funding to replace the two recycling trucks.