City officials conducted a press conference Thursday to discuss several things being proposed during the city’s budget talks.

Members of the Laurel City Council and various members of the city’s administration have been meeting for more than a week to discuss the city’s 2009 fiscal year budget.

Various administrators within the city have been conducting open meetings with the City Council to discuss next year’s budget.

Gary Suddith, the chief administrative officer for the City of Laurel, and Wanda Benson with the city’s Office of Public Relations conducted the press conference Thursday at Laurel City Hall to address questions concerning several things being proposed for next year’s budget.

“We are diligently looking for ways to cut cost,” Suddith said. “It is very difficult times for all.”

Suddith said city officials “knew we were going to have a tough budget year.”

Officials said once all the department heads submitted their proposed budgets for the next year, it was determined that $465,000 still needed to be trimmed from the projections.

“The problems we have is not with the management. It’s the lack of revenue and rising costs,” Suddith said. “Because of these things we are considering increases in our water and sewer rates.”

According to officials, the utilities department did not take in enough revenue to cover the cost of operations. Therefore, some adjustments will be made in next year’s budget to make the departments self-sufficient.

“We are looking at residential and business rates separately,” Suddith said. “We are still looking at it.”

However, according to a city ordinance, Suddith said, the amount of the cost of living increase on residential water and sewer rates cannot exceed three percent.

The current residential water rate is projected to increase from $10 to no more than $10.30 and the sewer residential rate from the current $15 to approximately $15.45 cents.

Suddith said other departments, which charge fees for certain services, are also been reviewed.

“The City of Laurel’s operating budget is $17 million and our current tax projection is around $16 million. We had a $1.6 million gap that could need to be made up between cost savings and fee increases,” he said. “These fee increases will affect every department that charges a fee.”

However, officials cautioned that no final decisions have been made about the rate and fee changes.