News
In the News: Russellville passes $8.9M budget
Posted on October 2, 2015
Originally published by the Times Daily.
The City Council, for the first time in several years, approved a budget before the start of the new fiscal year.
The council approved the $8,914,505 budget during a special meeting Wednesday afternoon.
Councilman William Nale applauded City Hall staff and department heads for their work.
“I’ve been a city employee and I’ve been on the council several years, and I can’t remember the last time the budget was passed on time,” Nale said.
Mayor David Grissom said city leaders set a goal to have a budget in place before Oct. 1, and he was glad they met that goal.
“There were several factors that went into us being able to get this budget passed before the new fiscal year started, but the biggest factor was how our city clerk, Belinda Miller, has handled the monthly expense reports,” Grissom said.
He said Miller got expense reports to all department heads each month so everyone knows exactly how their expenses are comparing to budget year to date, and last year.
Grissom said the nearly $9 million budget represented an increase over the FY2014-15 budget of $8,783,666 — something he said was because of the $200,000 increase in sales tax revenue the city has seen over the previous year.
“This is a tremendous increase in our sales tax revenue that can be accredited to the 600-plus jobs the city has added in the past couple of years,” Grissom said. “We were seeing the sales tax revenue beginning to trend upward around this time last year, and it just kept going up. We knew that we would be able to see the tangible effects those jobs had on the city, and that’s exactly what we are seeing here.”
He said if the trend holds steady, or increases, city leaders should be able to consider some purchases that have been delayed for some time.
“I hope that we will be able to look into purchasing some new patrol cars for the Police Department, and some other equipment that we’ve been needing,” Grissom said. “But we want to make sure this trend is going to hold before making these purchases because, ideally, we’d like to avoid borrowing any more funds.”
Grissom said the new budget doesn’t include across-the-board raises for employees, but does include several step raises.
“We are still in the middle of our study with Auburn University where we are evaluating all of our job descriptions, responsibilities and pay scales,” he said. “We expect this study will have an effect on our budget for next year in regard to salary increases or raises.”
Miller said total projected revenue for the year will come from local taxes and fees, intergovernmental transfers, fines and forfeitures, alcohol sales and use of city services.
He said there is only a $39 difference in the projected revenues of $8,914,505 and the projected expenditures of $8,914,466. She said an additional expenditure that had to be factored into the upcoming year was a $22,000 expense for holding the mayoral and council elections in 2016.
Miller said they also had to absorb a 7.8 percent increase in health insurance costs that totaled about $35,000. She said most other expenses remained the same from the previous year.
Grissom said though the budget is tight, he is confident department heads will continue to monitor their budgets and keep expenses at a minimum.
“This is especially important from now until the end of the calendar year,” he said. “These last three months are typically low revenue months, so we need to make sure we are sticking to what we have budgeted. We will re-evaluate where we are after the first of the year.”