Kyoto, Japan's beautiful old imperial capital, is going broke fast
Companies, agencies, institutions, etc
Watch CBS News
UNESCO World Heritage Sites
City Hall
the Asahi Broadcasting
Kansai TV
Ritsumeikan University
YTV News
150,000-strong
CBS Interactive Inc.
People
Lucy Craft
Daisaku Kadokawa
Tozai
Seitaro Wada
Hiroyuki Mori
Groups
Japanese
European
Buddhist
Shinto
Physical locations
No matching tags
Places
No matching tags
Locations
Tokyo
Kyoto
Japan
capital
Events
No matching tags
Summary
Kyoto Mayor Daisaku Kadokawa minced no words at a shocking news conference last year: "We're facing a crisis situation, with the prospect of bankruptcy within a decade." Without steep cuts in public services, it was forecast that the city will fall $2 billion into debt, with all reserve funds exhausted, within just five years. The city government slashed transit subsidies for senior citizens, raised day-care fees and cut salaries for civil servants — despite concern that the austerity measures would hasten an already-alarming exodus of residents from Kyoto. But the old imperial capital's budget woes are so baked in that Hiroyuki Mori, an expert in local public finance at Ritsumeikan University, told YTV News that "even an increase in tourists would not offset the red ink.""The core of municipal revenue is local and property taxes," he said, noting that on both counts, Kyoto comes up short.
As said here by Lucy Craft