TWIN FALLS, ID (KMVT) For the past year, the city of Twin Falls had just over 270 employees. In order to make its budget balance for the fiscal year that starts October 1st, the city did away with ten jobs that hadn't been filled. The city's income has dropped because fewer houses are being built here.

City Manager Travis Rothweiler says, "In 2008, we had collected nearly $1.3 million in building permit revenues. For the upcoming year, we're projecting to collect $450,000. So we're going to collect roughly 1/3 of what we collected in 2008."

Rothweiler says in April, city staff members began looking closely at how they could maintain the current level of services, but still save money in the upcoming budget. He says they had to make a lot of tough decisions. The police department had some 'wiggle room' to help save on employee salaries.

Lt. Craig Stotts says, "We vacated 3 positions. Those positions were 2 dispatch positions, and a department specialist position, which is a secretarial position."

Two positions were eliminated in the building department. The city council made a minor increase to utility rates this week, but left taxes the same.

Rothweiler says, "The decision was made that we need to, as an organization, really take a hard look at the level of service and find ways to incorporate that with a smaller employee count than what we had in the prior year."