City officials said they're making progress. In fact, they said Johnstown should be financially stable by 2009.

Tuesday night, a recovery team from Pittsburgh presented a few ideas about what the city should do to achieve it's goal. They asked for input from council members and some suggested the city should conduct a staffing study to compare municipalities similar to Johnstown’s size and see if Johnstown is understaffed or has the right amount of people working to lead the city.

Johnstown has been in distressed status for more than 13 years and will likely remain that way for another three years, making it the longest running distressed city in state history.

City officials said Johnstown is nothing like it was some years ago. They have a lot of projects in place and quite a few items on the table.

City Manager Curt Davis said, "Now we're at the point--let's take a look at economical development to build a tax base, fight assessment appeal, so quite a few items on the table."

The city is trying to build its tax base and leaders said other projects, like the Tech Park, will help generate more revenue, as well as help the city out of distressed status since more jobs will be coming into town.