The city ended its informal budget meeting Monday night approximately $200K in the black, but city leaders say the circumstances surrounding the budget are still complicated and concerning.

With a property tax hike failing (2C), and enterprise fees being phased out over 8 years (measure 300), the city is being forced to find other ways to make up for a $41.7 budget shortfall. They spent long hours on Monday trying to figure out exactly what kind of cuts would be made, and actually ended up with a surplus of $200,000.

That $200K will be given to parks and community centers, not including the Pioneers Museum as originally reported. (Editor's note: on Tuesday, the city corrected information given to KKTV 11 News Monday night, and is now saying the Pioneers Museum will not get any of that money). The cash will keep those community centers open for another three months while they look for more community funding to help keep them open in the long-term.

"The programs that will not be re-established like aquatics, will begin the process right now of demobilizing, so they're shut by the end of the year." said Paul Butcher, the director of Parks and Recreation.

"We need to do some community fund raising to see if we can do somethings to supplement those particular budgets," said councilman Darryl Glenn. Overall, the Parks budget will be cut by 70 percent, according to cuts mapped out by city leaders.

On Tuesday, Sue Skiffington-Blumberg, spokesperson for the City of Colorado Springs, released a breakdown of the decisions made in the City Council meetings.

1. 10-day furlough for civilians, which equates to a 3.8% pay cut.

2. There will be 125 layoffs, including Parks and Transit. Some Parks positions will get a three-month extension.

2. The Colorado Springs Police Department will initially eliminate at least 40 positions with approximately six civilian layoffs.

3. VAR (voluntary retirement, which was incentivized due to budget cuts) will eliminate 60 to 90 positions. Due to the timing of acceptance of applications this number has not yet been finalized.

4. Swimming pools were not restored.

5. Restoring the community centers, Starsmore Discovery Center and Rockledge Ranch for only 3 months, leaving $35,723 available for all park maintenance.

If Monday's proposed cuts are approved, transit will only run during the weekdays, starting at the end of 2009. Service would run Monday - Friday, until 6:45 p.m. to save cash.

City leaders have also come up with other ways to save cash and keep their community priorities intact; they've decided to only run half of the city's street lights. That means they'll turn the other half off at night to save on the electricity bill. The city, though, still has to decide which lights to cut.

"I think we did the very best we could with the resources we had," said council member Jan Martin.

By law, city council is required to vote twice on the budget. The first vote could be on Tuesday, but leaders say it's more likely they'll vote on it at the last meeting in November, and then again at the beginning of December.

Editor's Note: Although there will not be any layoffs, the CSPD wants to make it clear that at the end of 2010, close to 50 positions will be eliminated through early retirement and not filling vacant spots. "We're still eliminating several civilian positions and doing layoffs," said Colorado Springs Police Chief Richard Myers. "Additionally we're losing 31 sworn police officer positions and having to freeze 18 positions on top of that."

Stay with 11 News and KKTV.com for updates.