Allah manifests the fall of America.

GREETINGS,

  ” Allah manifests the fall of America. He desires to make America fall as a warning to her brothers in Europe. “—pg.174(THE FALL OF AMERICA)

—-U.S. Cities Expect Finances to Worsen as Property Taxes Slide

U.S. cities expect their financial strains to worsen as the slide in real estate prices that began four years ago cuts deeper into property-tax collections, according to a survey by the National League of Cities.

Eighty percent of city finance officers expect to have more difficulty balancing their budgets in the 2011 fiscal year, which began in June for most municipalities, than during the prior period, according to the survey. While housing prices have begun to stabilize, property taxes are expected to drop as home prices are reassessed to account for earlier declines.

“They’re in the eye of the storm right now,” said Christopher Hoene, the director of research for the association, a Washington group that lobbies for local governments.

The city officials’ expectations show how the economy’s emergence from the recession is leaving lingering financial difficulties for communities. Confronted with budget deficits, public officials have raised fees, cut spending for police and firefighters, and frozen employee pay to make up for the gaps.

The National League, which surveyed 338 cities from April through June, said general-fund revenue, adjusted for inflation, dropped 3.2 percent in the 2010 budget year. That was the steepest decline since the group began keeping track in 1986. Spending was cut 2.3 percent, the most since 2003.

Recession Impact

While the recession ended in June 2009, the unemployment rate is likely to remain above 9 percent next year as the economy fails to grow fast enough to add enough jobs for those seeking to rejoin the labor force, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

“What we’re seeing is the effects of the recession, in terms of revenue collections, and then the spending cuts in response to those collections are intensifying,” Hoene said.

The mounting fiscal distress has stoked speculation that investors could be hit by defaults in the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market, a traditional haven of the U.S. securities markets….HERE IS MORE

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