Akron City Council has passed the city's operating budget for 2012.

Budget and Finance Chair Garry Moneypenny tells AkronNewsNow.com about the biggest change in the budget.

"The most major change would be a decrease of $27 million dollars or overall 5 percent," he said.

The 2012 operating budget is $502 million, which is down from last year's budget of $528 million.

Moneypenny says the Council body was instrumental in moving forward with its adoption and passage Monday evening.

"I believe a lot of these council people did their homework, came back the following day to the budget hearings and asked the important questions they needed to in looking over the budget before it was passed.

Moneypenny said the budget was very lean, and in overall operating expenses would be reduced with its passage. He says Akron residents can expect the same quality services, just with less people.

"We have no laid-off full time employees at this point, we do have some seasonal employees that maybe won't be hired back this summer, so we are following the model of doing more with less."

The councilman adds that City Finance Director Diane Miller Dawson did a "phenomenal job" of organizing the budget meetings and providing City Council with the information they needed to adopt the budget.
 

Miller-Dawson says Akron's tax amnesty program is one of the main programs in terms of generating revenue.

"We're hoping the amnesty program will help us grow income tax revenues that will offset some of the cuts we'll be receiving from the State."

The city's employment numbers are the lowest they've been since the 1960's with over 1700 employees.

"Our employees have been working hard and they've been doing their part in balancing the budget by submitting their budget requests and cutting expenses where they can."