Boston ended its 2010 fiscal year with a surplus of $9.1 million, a report by the city said on Monday, while the city spent $2.3 billion over the same time.
The surplus is more than twice as high as it was the previous fiscal year, the Boston Municipal Research Bureau reported.
However, the surplus is "very small. . .compared to other years," said Dot Joyce, a spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas Menino, in a Boston Globe article.
Two years prior, Boston ended with a surplus of more than $15 million.
"It's going to be a rough year, so this will be welcome additional revenue," said Samuel Tyler, the BMRB president, in The Globe.
This year's surplus is only 0.4 percent of the total budget for the city, the BMRB reported.
However, the organization noted that in a bad economy, any surplus is welcome.
"It reinforces the fact that Boston is conservative in its budgeting, particularly on the revenue side," Tyler added.
Boston had spent more money over the fiscal year than it had set aside in its budget, Tyler said.
This means that the surplus came from higher than expected revenue from taxes, he added.
Still, the surplus is too small to do very much, Joyce said.
"Because it's not recurring revenue, it cannot be used to increase services," she told The Globe.
"It may be used to support services in these difficult economic times," she added.
Despite the surplus, both the state's police and court settlements accounts went over budget.
The fiscal year in Boston ends June 30.
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