BY EMILY BATTLE

The school resource officer at Walker-Grant Middle School, rental housing inspections in College Heights and next year's planned property reassessment are among the services that would be cut or postponed in the proposed budget Fredericksburg City Manager Beverly Cameron presented last night.

The proposal for next year doesn't include a real estate tax increase and totals $71.8 million--1 percent smaller than this year's budget.

Cameron said the proposal was an exercise in scaling back city spending to the level that current revenues--which are down significantly over the past five years--can support.

"There are many worthy programs and services that cannot be funded at sufficient levels," Cameron said. "There's just not enough money to go around."

In addition to the continued decline of sales tax revenues, the city will be working with $450,000 less in aid from the state next year than it had this year--and that gap could increase, depending on how the General Assembly resolves its budget.

In addition, the city used $1.3 million from reserves to balance this year's budget, meaning it spent more than it took in. Cameron proposes spending $700,000 in reserves next year. The city's reserves would remain above the level called for in Fredericksburg's financial guidelines, but reserve spending can't continue indefinitely.

Next year would be the third year in a row that Fredericksburg's budget has shrunk. The city work force is already down 25 people from two years ago, and this budget would eliminate seven more positions through attrition and reassignment.

Two holidays--Columbus Day and Presidents Day--would become unpaid furlough days for city employees, and City Hall would close for two additional furlough days--July 16 and June 24.

This would save the city about $140,000 and would amount to a 1.5 percent salary cut for city workers. Emergency personnel, such as police patrol officers, firefighters and wastewater treatment plant operators, would be exempt from the furloughs.

But it won't be just city employees noticing the funding reductions.

Cameron's proposal calls for the school resource officer at Walker-Grant Middle School to be reassigned to patrols.

The employee in charge of the rental housing inspection program, which now exists in College Heights and had been proposed to be expanded to the Fall Hill Avenue corridor, will also be reassigned, marking the end of that program.