The Jackson City Council has passed its budget – for the first time at least.
The Council voted 5-2 in a special-called meeting on Friday, July 12, to pass the budget that has been proposed a couple times with a deficit of $3 million and no money officially budgeted for capital needs that weren’t already funded from other sources.
The budget requires two readings, so the Council will have to approve it one more time.
The meeting’s agenda only had two items on it, but the meeting lasted for nearly an hour.
City Recorder Bobby Arnold went over the budget one more time for the Council and took a few questions about it, and he did make one key clarification regarding the budget and state law.
“It’s illegal for the City to have a budget that’s not balanced,” Arnold said. “But that doesn’t mean a budget is passed on projected revenues.
“The budget is balanced based on what money is available.”
The City has enough funds in its general fund balance to take care of the deficit, but Arnold said it’s possible that revenue projections are conservative, and enough revenue comes in that they won’t have to dip into that fund.
But the move to pass the budget didn’t come without serious discussion.
Four people spoke during public comments – two firefighters speaking on behalf of budgeted pay increases for their department and two business owners in Downtown wanting to find a different location for the men’s homeless shelter that was officially approved last week, meaning the City will have to figure out how to pay for that as well.
Council member Larry Lowrance made a presentation looking at the last couple years of the budget. He said the budget has grown by $16 million – 20 percent – in two years. He broke down the percentages by how much the payroll for Jackson Police and Jackson Fire have risen in the past year – 14 and 9 percent, respectively.
“I’m very much in favor of these pay increases for our first responders, but I’m wanting to know how we account for every single one of those $16 million, and I still haven’t gotten a clear answer,” Lowrance said.
Seven minutes into his presentation, Councilman Frank McMeen called for the vote, which passed 5-2 with Lowrance and Candace Busby dissenting.
They then discussed beginning the process of looking into borrowing money to put into the fund balance after they go to the fund balance to fill any gaps that may happen in the budget.
Lowrance voiced that he was against the measure, but that was the only remark mentioned directly before the vote, and it passed 5-2 with Lowrance and Busby dissenting.
After the meeting Mayor Scott Conger was glad to have the first reading approved. He didn’t clarify a timeline for the second meeting other than saying it would be before the August monthly meeting.
Because the City went with a continuance with the budget after not passing it before June 30, the Council has until Aug. 31 to pass two readings.
Attendance report: J.P. Stovall and Marda Wallace were absent from the meeting, while Johnny Dodd attended by zoom.
Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news