The city’s budget is divided into chunks– the biggest is the general fund budget– around $48 million in revenue and expenses that includes some of the city’s biggest line items, like school funding. This year the assembly is funding schools to the cap, or the maximum allowed by state law, in addition to school building maintenance and funding the Blatchley Middle School swimming pool.
The general fund budget, as it stands, is at a surplus of over $200,000 but that could change. In the budget, the municipal administrator notes recent uncertainty around federal grant programs as a concern since many municipal infrastructure projects are contingent on federal funding, and a ballot measure to limit cruise tourism could impact the city’s bottom line. Nevertheless, the assembly has planned to keep city services relatively status quo for now.
It’s a behemoth document, but even at 139 pages, Assembly Member JJ Carlson felt the capital improvement plan included in the budget should have included more information, specifically a “capital improvement program” which includes a sizable estimate for school maintenance in the future.
“What I see here looks great, but I have concerns about what I don’t see here. And what I don’t see is incorporating the schools into this,” Carlson said. “We’ve taken back on maintenance this past year, and we did a very robust, through our maintenance department and asset management, of looking at, then, I believe there was about $30 million of scoped work in our school facilities.”
The $30 million Carlson noted is not what the assembly has budgeted for school maintenance this year, but what the city expects to spend on school building repairs in the future. Still, Carlson said the details should have been included, per the city’s charter, and she couldn’t approve the budget document without it. Deputy Mayor Tim Pike said her concerns were valid, but disagreed.
“Putting it into this thing does not commit us to spending $30 million on anything at the school district or any of the other things in that plan,” Pike said. “It is just acknowledging that a plan exists.”
The General fund budget passed on a 4-1 vote on first reading with Carlson opposed.
The enterprise fund budgets drew more criticism due to the rate increases for each city utility. During public comment, former mayor and assembly member Valorie Nelson called for the assembly to vote no.
“I’m asking you to please vote no on this budget. The increases in user fees are getting way too far out of line with what quite a few of us can afford,” Nelson said. “Many of you need to open your eyes to what is occurring as far as increases in the number of employees as well as their salary increases under the current administrator’s tenure.”
Across the board, assembly members said that they didn’t want to raise but most agreed that it was necessary in order to continue providing public services at the same level and pay city staff a living wage. Assembly member Kevin Mosher lamented the increases, but defended the assembly’s decision to raise wages, which was supported by a rate study.
“A couple years ago, I’d say, ‘Hell no,'” Mosher said, but added that a period of high turnover at the city and subsequent hiring challenges had changed his mind.
“There was a shift somehow where…a lot of the people retired, and then we didn’t have a lot of new bodies to come in and fill these positions…we were at a place that just about two, three years ago, where we had all this money coming in, but we had nobody to work on these projects.” Mosher said. “So we’ve had to increase a little, bit by bit, to try to retain employees. Now that we’ve raised wages, I believe we have been able to fill positions much better. So it’s like this ‘give and take’.”
And Deputy Mayor Pike said he felt better about approving the enterprise fund budgets because most of the rate increases were lower than inflation.
“Unfortunately, inflation has been quite hot in the last three or four years, and we are still trying to get caught up with that,” Pike said. “And in order to pay the wages that that are required for us to maintain people employed here and living wages.”
Ultimately the enterprise fund budgets passed 5-0. Both the enterprise and general fund budgets will come before the assembly again for a final reading later this month.
Editor’s Note: The print version of this story has been updated to clarify the difference between the capital improvement plan and program.
