Tempers flare as City Council passes budget

Editor's note: This story has been edited since its initial publication.

The City of Jackson officially has a budget for the next fiscal year.

The Jackson City Council met in a special-called meeting on Friday, July 19, a week after the budget was approved on first reading with the added stipulations that the City would dip into its general fund balance to ensure all pay increases would be paid for and they would look into taking on debt to take care of capital needs.

The seven days between meetings was full of public discussion that featured competing sides in the budget argument.

On one side, Mayor Scott Conger went live on Wednesday with an update on his Facebook page, and the session ended with him making a passionate statement regarding recent media reports from local television station suggesting the City employees didn’t need the pay raise yet that’s in the budget because of funding concerns.

Those on the Council who were concerned about the budget and its $3 million deficit met at Town & Country Realty a day earlier to discuss those concerns.

Larry Lowrance led the meeting and raised questions regarding if the raises needed to be as large as they are to be in line with a salary study that was done in 2022 that showed how far behind each department and the City as a whole was behind other similar-sized cities in the surrounding region including Middle Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi.

“One thing that people need to know about that salary study is when a department for example is shown to be a certain percentage behind, that percentage isn’t behind being caught up to everyone in that study,” Conger said on Friday after the budget was passed. “That’s the percentage behind just being average on that list, and I think that information might’ve been lost on some people who looked at that study.”

Council member Russ McKelvey opened the discussion on Friday by referencing one of the big global stories from the previous 12 hours leading into the meeting, the Microsoft software update that was shutting down machines and in some cases entire systems.

“At 4:30 this morning, we received an email from the City’s IT manager, Brian Taylor, outlining that the update had happened and affected some of the City’s services including 9-1-1 and other overnight communications,” McKelvey said. “He and his staff were up all night along with our other workers who are typically up all night fixing the problem and getting our communications system up again and then updating all of us about it. At 4:30 in the morning.

“And I just want to say as we’re voting for this budget and the pay raises in it, that’s the people that these raises are for. I don’t want us to forget about the people and not just the numbers as we’re looking at this issue.”

Council member Marda Wallace said she was excited about $7 million being earmarked for road improvements that she’s been pushing for in recent weeks and made a similar statement supporting first responders and other City workers.

Lowrance was the next one to speak, and he continued his questions, the first one being where the $7 million was coming from. Conger responded that it was coming from a resolution they voted on last week to look into borrowing money for capital needs, to which Lowrance said that shouldn’t be the case.

Lowrance continued his questions – similar to the questions and concerns he raised in the Council meeting a week before and again in the informal meeting on Thursday – until Conger began to respond and make the case again for the workers.

As tensions between Conger and Lowrance began to increase, multiple other members of the Council called the question, which forced the vote to happen.

Lowrance, J.P. Stovall and Candace Busby were the dissenters in a 6-3 vote to approve the budget.

Immediately after the vote, Conger asked for a motion to adjourn, and the meeting was over.

Once the meeting was over, Stovall – frustrated with the budget being passed with the deficit – looked at Wallace sitting next to him and made a passionate statement indicating the City will either have to continue borrowing money or raise taxes at some point in the future.

When Wallace responded – she said she was trying to get him to calm down – he quickly replied, “Shut up,” loud enough for people a few rows into the gallery of the George A. Smith City Council Room to hear before walking off.

“I just don’t understand this,” Stovall said. “Because I’m not against the raises. I’m really not.

“But if I’m working in the private sector, and I do a good job. At the end of the year if I go to my boss and ask for a raise, if I deserve it, he’ll want to give it to me. But what will he do if the business doesn’t have the money to for a raise? Will he go out and borrow that money? No. I just don’t get a raise that year. My vote wasn’t against giving them more money or saying they don’t deserve it. It was against paying this much more when surely there could’ve been something else we could’ve done.”

Council member Johnny Dodd said the City is in a tough position now since the Council passed a budget with the $3 million deficit and is set to borrow money to take care of street surfaces. But they’ve got to figure it out.

“We’ve committed to these pay raises and this homeless shelter and doing all this other stuff,” Dodd said. “But it’s just like a household budget with one income or two.

“If you don’t have enough money to pay your expenses, you look at the expenses you don’t need to pay out and cut them out. But once you felt like you’ve done that, then you look at how much more money you need and you figure out how to get it. Because there’s no more money, so you need to produce it somehow – if that means another job or having a yard sale or something. That’s what we as a City have to figure out.”

Conger was glad to have the budget passed so the raises for the City’s workers will kick in soon.

“Our people here at the City work their tails off every day, and they’ve been attacked over the last couple weeks because of their pay, and that’s not right,” Conger said. “So I’m glad we were able to get this done for their sake and now we can move on.

“We need to figure out how to pay for some of these things, but we’ll figure it out.”

Chief of staff position open: Conger was asked about the open chief of staff position in his office since Alex Reed resigned from the position this week following his Alford plea for illegal tracking of an individual and having two other charges dismissed.

Conger said there’s no timetable to hire another chief, but he plans to fill the position at some point in the future.

“That’s definitely a position that is needed, and it’s one I can appoint without posting,” Conger said. “So it’s a matter of finding someone I can trust to handle the duties and responsibilities on a daily basis.”

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news