City Council to have 2 special meetings for budget approval

Jackson City Council will have two special-called meetings before the end of the month.

That’s because they’ve already had their monthly meeting for June and still haven’t had the first reading of their annual budget, which is required to be approved and ratified by Sunday, June 30.

City Recorder Bobby Arnold discussed the budget so far with six members of the Council during a work session on May 30.

Arnold and Mayor Scott Conger did discuss the reason why they’re about a month behind schedule in getting the budget to the council members compared to previous years since Conger was first elected in 2019.

The gradual implementation of new software that streamlines the business, accounting and record-keeping for the city has caused delays throughout the past year as they’ve implemented the system a little at a time. Those delays caused a delay in the budgeting process from the internal perspective after the Council had budget hearings with department heads in April.

Council member Larry Lowrance had a number of questions for Arnold, mainly pertaining to the pay rates for individual employees of the City. He asked about seeing a history of the pay rates for the workers along with a history of how many workers there have been in each department in recent years.

“I just feel like it would give us a good idea of what the City has paid in the past compared to what it’s paying now,” Lowrance said.

Arnold said they’re leaving pay decisions up to the department heads and only giving payroll budget amounts in this budget because of time constraints.

“We know that payroll costs are up because of higher wages and more employees,” Arnold said. “In addition to that with higher pay comes higher benefits costs.”

Arnold said the City’s revenue from property taxes grew about 1.8 percent, which totals about $650,000 and is on pace with all the previous years Arnold has been working for the City.

After going through different categories of expenditures and why some of them have noticeable changes compared to last year, Arnold ended the presentation by letting the present council members know he will try to put together a list of expense restructuring to give them a better idea of how expenses are changing and what that means to the overall bottom line of the City’s budget.

The City hasn’t announced official dates and times for the special called meetings, but they plan to do so as soon as possible.

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news