Cutting public transit service, increasing sales tax rates and deciding how aggressive the community should be in attracting new jobs are up for debate at City Hall in 2008.

But none of those issues will be the one that consumes commissioners for the year. That honor goes to one simple figure: the checkbook balance.

“I think we all can predict that our revenues will be very slow to grow,” City Commissioner Rob Chestnut said.

National and local headlines are providing evidence for that line of thinking. A national slowdown in the real estate market – and locally a decline in home sales and new building permits – have commissioners bracing for property tax revenues to grow at their slowest rate in decades. Sales tax collections also are a worry after local sales tax collections for 2007 have been sluggish at best.

Cuts to the T – the city’s public transit system – may be where the city’s financial crunch becomes most visible to the public. Commissioners haven’t made any decisions to cut the city’s public transit services yet. But city staff members have repeatedly told commissioners that it will cost significantly more money to run the T at its current levels, in part because a five-year contract that has garnered the city less expensive fuel is expiring.

“We’ve already had a shot fired across our bow on that issue,” Mayor Sue Hack said. “We’re going to have to have a serious discussion about the future of transit service.”

Much of the discussion may center on whether the community is willing to increase taxes to allow the transit system to operate at its current levels. Already, there is serious talk about a major redesign of the system.

“I think we’re going to have to come up with a revised format for services,” said Mike Dever, who – if tradition holds – is slated to begin a one-year term as mayor in April.

Dever said changes in the number of routes, new routes and different levels of frequency all need to be discussed.

Like every year, the bulk of the discussion probably will happen in the summer, when commissioners are knee-deep into crafting a budget for 2009.

It could be a busy summer because Hack said she had not given up on the notion of holding an election in August on a half-cent sales tax increase to primarily fund street improvements. Commissioners haven’t taken action to put a sales tax increase on the ballot, but Hack said she wants commissioners to reach a fish-or-cut-bait moment on the long talked about sales tax issue.

But one of the larger issues surrounding an August election may be how enthusiastically the city’s next mayor supports the tax increase. Dever – who is vice mayor, which puts him in line to be the next mayor – has stopped short of endorsing a half-cent sales tax increase.

“I’m still not convinced that we can’t do a better job of reducing expenditures,” Dever said.

Dever, though, said he’s not entirely ruling out a sales tax increase either, mainly because he believes the city’s streets need a lot of maintenance attention that is difficult to fund in the city’s current budget.

Chestnut said he wants the commission to come to a decision on the sales tax issue. He said he wants the majority of any new sales tax money to be dedicated to street repair issues, but said he would like some discussion on using sales tax money for infrastructure projects that could increase the city’s chances to win new economic development projects.

That likely would be just one of several economic development discussions. Both Hack and Chestnut said there needs to be a community-wide discussion on whether the city should be using new forms of economic development incentives in an effort to attract new jobs.

The issue has been a controversial one after the city in late 2007 approved an incentives package for Deciphera Pharmaceuticals that included a never-before-used tax rebate provision.

“It is clear that the community has not come to any consensus on public incentives,” Hack said. “We’ve got to have a conversation about public incentives.”

Coming Wednesday: Kansas University