Crossville City Council spent two hours
working on their 2019-20 budget and will hold another work session
Tuesday, April 30 to review the budgets of the water and sewer
departments.
L-R sitting, Council members Rob Harrison, Art Gernt,
Mayor James Mayberry, Scot Shanks, and manager Greg Wood.
Standing in back is finance director Fred Houston.
Looking at the general fund, the budget
stood some $531,244 in the red following the meeting. City Manager
Greg Wood told the council that he had gone over the budget and cut
some $890,000 out of the department requests prior to the meeting and
it is possible some of those items may be returned to the budget when
the council hears from department heads.
One planned change Mr. Wood discussed
would trade the current contract cleaning services for a full time
city custodian, a move he estimated would save the city about
$10,000.
Training costs for the city police
department were increased due to high turnover rates that require
newly hired officers to attend the police academy. Attending the academy is about three times as costly as the regular annual
continuing education training officers must have to maintain
certification.
One increased line item for the city's
budget is the share of the operation of the Central Communications
Center that operates the 911 call center. With the reduction of the
three partners, the costs remain split between the city and the
county. Manager Wood said that he felt the city needed to encourage
their elected officials to increase the fee on phone lines to fund
the 911 operations so city taxpayers would not be double taxed as
they pay a portion for the city as well as a portion of the county
funding.
Council discussed sidewalk projects and
the airport among other items in the budget.
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