As in many cities, costs for providing police, fire and emergency medical services takes up nearly half of Peachtree City’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2009. The new $27.48 million budget is expected to be approved by the City Council Thursday night.

What might be surprising is what comes in second: “culture and recreation” at $5 million, about 18.4 percent of the total city budget.

The proposed budget dedicates $12.3 million to the police and fire departments, emergency medical services and communications.

Police and communications — lumped together in the budget — accounts for $6.3 million, or 23 percent of the total budget.

The fire department and EMS together get $5.9 million, or about 21.6 percent. The city’s EMS operates as part of the fire department.

In the budget category of culture and recreation, the city plans to spend $2.86 million on recreation, another $936,650 on the Kedron Fieldhouse — an all-weather swimming facility with multi-purpose gyms — $1 million on the city library and $191,093 on the Gathering Place Senior Center.

On the revenue side, the city expects to get nearly $1 million from municipal court fines and fees and library fines.

The city is projecting recreation program fees of around $423,000, about 15 percent of what it costs to run the rec program. That doesn’t count Kedron Fieldhouse, which costs slightly under $1 million a year to operate.

The bulk of the city’s income is derived from ad valorem property taxes ($9.1 million), the local option sales tax ($7 million) and an insurance premium tax ($1.78 million).

Total city tax income from all sources — including taxes on alcoholic beverages and mixed drink sales — is projected to be $22.436 million.

To avoid a millage rate increase the city is projected to use nearly $1.15 million in cash reserves to balance the budget. That still leaves the city well over its target of having 20 percent of its annual budget on hand as a fallback if needed, according to City Finance Director Paul Salvatore.

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