Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposed budget could pose a deficit of about $3 million in the current city budget, East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton said.

Staton said cuts made on the state level to incentives, such as revenue sharing — a process of the state reimbursing money to municipalities and city governments in exchange for collecting taxes on gas, sales and other items — could force the city to cut jobs, lower city employee salaries or scale down some public service programs.

He said the initial budget plan assumed total elimination of statutory revenue sharing without projection of what the city might expect from the state.

“This tries to track what reserves we start with, what the deficit does to those reserves (and) what adjustments that we’ll make along the way,” Staton said.

He said the city currently receives $1.8 million from revenue sharing.

Staton said some sources of revenue for the city to help balance the budget this year would include a one-time elimination of $200,000 in sidewalk improvements and rolling the money allotted for such improvements into next year’s budget as well as a state reimbursement of $420,000 spent on improvements to the White Memorial Park area north of MSU’s campus.

He said even with these changes, the city likely would need to cut about $560,000 from the current budget.

“These numbers are challenging,” Staton said. “(The city has) six months to find half a million dollars.”

Councilmember Roger Peters said the budget likely was the best preparation the city could make with uncertainty remaining in the state government’s budget.

“I am critical of this, but I can’t think of a more reasonable thing to do right now,” Peters said.

East Lansing Mayor Vic Loomis said decisions needed to be made so the city will be able to cope with the budget changes.

“I think given all that uncertainty (in the state government’s budget), somebody’s got to make a decision,” Loomis said.