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For years, the city of Richmond hasn’t set aside money in its annual budgets for basic services such as leaf collection and snow removal.

City officials figured they’d find the money anyway.

This year it didn’t work out, and the city is struggling to plug a $9.2 million budget deficit halfway through the fiscal year.

Closing out her first year as Richmond’s chief administrative officer, Selena Cuffee-Glenn expressed mild bewilderment last week at the situation.

“My observations are that this is not how you do business,” she said. “Not having leaf pickup as a line item in the budget — this is something that goes back 20-plus years. ... There is a cost associated with that and that cost should be reflected in the budget, but it was not.”

To make up the funding gaps in departmental budgets, each year city officials have dipped into money set aside for vacant positions, she said. That practice combined this year with lower-than-projected revenues has resulted in the projected deficit: “It’s sort of like a perfect storm,” she said.

She called the city’s budgeting practices unusual and noted that the budget leaves out a “plethora of things on the actual expenditures side.”