Mayor Nutter’s 2015 budget: here’s his proposed tech spending

Mayor Nutter proposed a $3.8 billion budget for 2015 yesterday in City Hall, while municipal workers protested outside. The budget, which must be approved by City Council, includes no major departmental cuts, the Daily News reported.

Here are the technology-relevant highlights from the overview of the budget. The actual, line-by-line proposed budget will be available in a few weeks. Check out Nutter’s five-year plan here.

• $2.5 million to keep all Free Library branches, which act as neighborhood computer labs, open six days a week. Most are only open five days a week. (During his address, Nutter apologized for trying to close some libraries during the recession.)
• $3.3 million to the Office of Innovation and Technology for citywide IT upgrades and an upgrade to the city’s data center ($1.5 million)
• $2.5 million to build a concourse connecting Suburban Station’s underground markets to the new Comcast tower
• Nutter proposed $500,000 to Parks and Recreation to add more staff, said Ben Burenstein of Parks and Recreation. None of this extra money is for the 24 public computer labs that Parks and Recreation manages with the Free Library, which is not surprising, Burenstein said, since the computer lab budget comes through the Office of Innovation and Technology
• $28 million in wage and business privilege tax reductions

Read more on the Inquirer here.

Find the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce’s response to the budget here.