Public employees see "surplus" as a jackpot bonus or raise. About the only good that will come of this in the one, maybe, two years that the city tax rate will be at zero, are the complaints that you'll hear from the folks that have been cheating for years. The most vocal opponents of the cut to zero (other than the policticians and would-be-do-gooders) are the folks already at zero, for whatever reason, who do not get the same tax cut as everyone else.
We had basically the same thing happen here, except it was county taxes which were reduced by 35%. However, the county exec. and the county legislature forgot to cut expenses and went on a spending spree. In just several years, the county is in approximately an eighty million dollar debt. In both cases, I suspect it's a setup for regionalization.