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QUINCY, ILL. -- The City of Quincy is already facing some hardships in the first days of its new budget.

During last night's city council meeting councilmen learned the city's tax collections for the month of April were down five percent or around $113 thousand from last year.

We talked with Gary Sparks, Quincy's Director of Administrative Services. He says the city also expects revenues to fall by about $2.6 million dollars in this new 2010 - 2011 fiscal year.

And the situation gets a bit worse.  The city anticipates expenses to go up a million dollars this year, while the state of Illinois lags four to five months behind in income tax reimbursements.

That puts Quincy in a tough position financially.  But city leaders say they worked proactively to meet the challenges, by cutting more than $2.3 million from the budget.

The only good news is because of the penny pinching done by city departments, Quincy started the fiscal year Saturday with more than $300 thousand more in the bank than anticipated.

But Sparks says despite challenges, the city is doing its best to minimize the impact to services for residents.

Sparks said, "It's a difficult time for us right now. We are doing the very best we can to get by. Certainly we have done a lot of initiatives. If we hadn't gotten ahead of this downturn we would be in a tough situation right now. But we've been able to manage."

Sparks says due to the budget crunch, folks won't see as many projects like this one going on around town in an effort to save money.

He says the city has done many things to try to meet the fiscal challenges head on.

Some of those cost-saving measures include offering early retirements, as well as city departments cutting back on equipment and materials.