Although Maple Valley’s 2012 budget has yet to be presented to City Council, the likelihood of cuts or layoffs appear to be low.

According to Finance Director Tony McCarthy, the annual budget is not expected to have any significant changes from last year.

“We’re not looking at any cuts,” he said.

However, he cautioned that the budget has yet to be finalized.

“We haven’t put the budget out yet, so I can’t tell you (for sure) what’s in it,” he said.

McCarthy expects to present the finalized budget proposal to the City Council on Nov. 7.

Most of this he attributed to the changes that were made for the 2011 budget.

“Last year we had to take a serious look at the budget and not fund the 25 percent transfer to capital and increasing the share in employee benefits,” McCarthy said.

Much of this is due to what McCarthy called natural savings when budgeting for employees.

“Because we’ve historically budgeted conservatively we’ve always done better than we’re budgeted to do,” he said. “We budget all of our employee as if they’re going to be here the whole year and have a full family.”

Usually, the natural savings is around 7 to 8 percent.

“The budget assumes we’re going to spend it, but we don’t,” he said.