The industrial city of Middletown in southwest Ohio is much like Elyria.

Elyria has about 55,000 people, while Middletown is slightly smaller with 51,000 people.

Area-wise, Middletown is slightly larger - about 25 square miles, compared with Elyria’s 20. And Elyria has the Black River, while Middletown has the Great Miami River.

Both cities also have an income tax rate of 1.75 percent, and both have a projected budget deficit for 2010.

How these seemingly similar cities plan to deal with the deficit is where they differ.

Coming off a defeat in the city’s attempt to increase the income tax rate by 0.5 percentage points, Elyria will face a $4 million deficit next year, which means the city jail will remain closed, police officers will be laid off and other city departments will face six-figure cuts.

Middletown City Manager Judy Gilleland said she can empathize with the struggles of Elyria Mayor Bill Grace. Her city is also facing a deficit, albeit a smaller one of about $1 million.

“I don’t know of any city that is not feeling a fiscal crunch right now,” Gilleland said. “Even cities that have been traditionally unharmed by a weak economy are feeling the pain.”

Gilleland said Middletown is a city that has been in cutback mode for more than 10 years. But with a healthy general fund balance of $7 million, it is weathering the storm by dipping into that reserve fund and using it for what it was intended for.

“We are an older industrial city with many great things happening, yet we know we struggle financially,” she said. “That fund is like your personal savings account, and what we want to guard against is that once you dip into it, it is that much easier to deplete it. I prefer to not spend our fund balance, but we are fortunate enough to have 25 percent, and we will never intentionally dip below 15 percent.”

They are also leaving vacant positions unfilled and cutting back on services, she said.

The positions that will remain vacant are in the Police and Fire departments “but are not people on the streets,” Gilleland said. “Thankfully, we are not there. Public safety is a top priority in Middletown.”

Elyria doesn’t have such an option.

It depleted its general fund balance this year as it has overspent this year’s budget by nearly $1.8 million. As City Auditor Ted Pileski has said recently, Elyria is basically like hundreds of its residents: It is living paycheck to paycheck.

“Basically, we will be living from income tax distribution to income tax distribution,” he said. “It’s not good when you are at a point where you have no money to make payroll without getting additional money in, but that’s where we are at right now.”

Across the state, leaders of most major cities are wringing their hands over next year’s budget.

Mansfield

In Mansfield, elected leaders are cobbling together a plan to address a multimillion-dollar deficit by continuing the 32-hour work weeks started earlier this year for much of the administrative staff and the city also will be cutting back on city services such as plowing snow, opening swimming pools and operating parks.

Not only is Mansfield facing a reported $3 million deficit in the general fund, there also is a $1.2 million deficit projected in the city’s water fund.

Springfield

Springfield also is dipping into its reserve fund to cover a $1 million shortage predicted for next year as the expenses will reportedly be nearly

$38.3 million while projected revenue will be $37.3 million.

The local firefighters union in Springfield - worried about where the city’s budget is heading - agreed to a pay freeze for the next two years. Likewise, snowplowing is reportedly being limited this winter due to the budget.

Cuyahoga Falls

Even a top-rated city, Cuyahoga Falls, is being forced to think about budget cuts as revenue projections are holding steady for another year. New buzz words such as cost-cutting, furlough days and union concessions are in everyone’s vocabulary, but none knows them better than Mayor Don Robart.

“I think I can confidently say that all of Northeast Ohio is either now confronting drastic times or will be soon,” he said. “The reason there is a variance is because some cities do more forecasting. The city that is not bracing for a budget crisis is the one that is just not looking down the road far enough.”

Future forecasting has enabled Cuyahoga Falls to look to 2010 without a projected deficit, Robart said.

“But we will have one in 2011, and that is what we are bracing for now,” he said.

Next year will be a hard one for cities all over Ohio, but those that weather the financial storm better will be the ones that have been planning for it longer.

Robart said layoffs are the last thing he wants to do, so he is starting to work his way away from 2011’s $3 million projected deficit by going after concessions. So far, only nonunion employees have signed off on the plan.

Union employees have not agreed to the cost-cutting plan and have since called in an auditor to look of the city’s books, Robart said.

“This kind of thinking is hard because the unions keep asking why do they have to take these cuts now and we are not even projecting a deficit in 2010,” he said. “But what would happen if we did nothing now then came to them next year in a panic? The first thing they would say is, ‘Why are we just hearing about this now?’ ”

While Robart said he can’t comment on what Grace is doing to balance Elyria’s budget, he did say that the cost-cutting talks mayors are having now are real reactions to the current economy.

“This is not a figment of the mayor’s imagination or as one person said down here, ‘Oh, it’s fashionable to make cuts. All the mayors are doing it,’ ” he said. “It’s not fashionable. No mayor wants to lay off anyone. It’s just a function of the numbers we are seeing.”

Parma

With a general fund budget of $47 million, Parma slashed expenses this year to get the budget down to $42 million, according to Parma City Council President Chuck Germana. Now, for 2010, the finance team is looking to cut another $2 million from its general fund.

“We are looking at another worst year,” Germana said. “We are struggling on what we are actually going to be doing.”

Germana said many of the cost-cutting items put into place this year were seen as one-time sacrifices.

And, if declining revenue wasn’t enough to send Parma’s budget into a tailspin, Germana said a beast of a problem still lingers next year.

The longtime council member said the city is looking at a double-digit increase to its health care premiums.

“When you are furloughing people and asking them to give up 10 percent of their pay, it’s difficult to also tackle the problem of increased health care,” he said. “But raising fees is not going to bring us out of this. It will take the cooperation of management and employees. A lot of cities did not start planning a year ago. They just played this wait-and-see game and now they are laying people off, and that’s not where you want to be in a crisis.”

Contact Lisa Roberson at 329-7121 or lroberson@chroniclet.com.

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