Port Arthur’s professional staff will present the City Council with a proposed budget Tuesday night that is balanced and “recovery focused,” Assistant City Manager Rebecca Underhill said Wednesday. Property taxes will remain the same.

The City Council hosted the second of its two hearings on the tax rate and a public hearing on the budget Tuesday. There were no public comments at the meetings.

Underhill said the operational budget would remain about the same, should the council vote to accept it at its 5:30 p.m. meeting next week.

She said goals for the budget are threefold:

• Maintain city operations

• Continue the city’s recovery from Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey damages

• Improve the city’s financial flexibility in order to apply for matching fund grants.

“We are spending within our annual operational budget,” she said, which is proposed at $113,543,129 for Fiscal Year 2019. The operations budget for fiscal 2018, which ends Sept. 30, is $109.6 million. The operations budget includes spending for such efforts as debt payments, water, utility, and solid waste operations.

“We are going to spend a little more next year,” she said.

She said the proposed plan does not include tapping the city’s reserves, or “rainy day” fund. Instead, the proposed plan calls for augmenting the reserves to better position the city for available grants that require a city match.

Reserves will grow by $2.9 million to a total of $25.3 million, which she said exceeds city policy mandates.

Oftentimes, she said, state and federal governments require local governments to put up 10-25 percent of their own money to acquire grants.

“We want the flexibility to take advantage of grants,” she said.

She said city officials had some concerns Port Arthur might lose property tax revenues because of storm-related damages to businesses and homes. But, she said, there was enough new investment, commercial and industrial, that property tax revenue should be “basically flat.”

The proposed budget calls for six new employees to be spread out across several departments. Some departments will lose employees.

The budget and tax rate will be presented to the City Council as ordinances.