With the city facing a $5.5 million revenue shortfall and the economic news continuing bad, Durham City Manager Tom Bonfield opened today's city budget retreat on a cautionary note.
"This budget will be the most challenging of anyone's career in this room," he said to a gathering of council members, department heads and other city employees at Durham Technical Community College.
"Budgeting as we have done it in the past is not an option," he said, but the present economic climate affords a chance for "changing our paradigms" and "challenging our comfort zones."
Warning the audiences that some recommendations for 2009-'10 "are not going to sit well" with council members, city employees or citizens, Bonfield said it is "critical that the public understand where we are. ... It is important we be transparent about it.
"It all boils down to choices," he said. "It's a zero-sum game."
Citizens' opportunities to weigh in on next year's budget begin Feb. 14 with the first Coffee With Council meeting, 10 a.m. to noon at the Campus Hills Recreation Center on Alston Avenue.
