Friday, July 5, 2002
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Friday, July 5, 2002 |
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PTC Council prepares to massage 2002-03 budget at special meeting By JOHN
MUNFORD
Sharpen your pencils and keep your calculators handy. It's budget time for the Peachtree City Council, which will hold a special meeting Monday, July 15, at 6 p.m. at City Hall. Council has already taken action to try and stave off a millage increase. Earlier this year, council shrank its requirements for building its cash reserve fund with the hopes of heading off a millage increase. But council will have to get creative with its financing to battle several trends in the budget. Mayor Steve Brown is particularly worried about the city's insurance costs, which have risen dramatically in the past few years. Currently, the city's medical plan is self-insured, meaning that it sets aside an amount of money to handle employee claims instead of going through an insurance company. Although one possible solution would be for the city to seek bids from insurance companies, Brown said he recently learned at a conference that those premiums may skyrocket as much as 40 percent. "We've got to do some serious work and look at the real facts and figures," Brown said. "We've got to look at these things in a realistic sense." This council is also impaired budget-wise by the previous council's choice to freeze the millage rate and pass an aggressive pay plan which increased the salaries of many city employees, Brown noted. The proposed extension of TDK Boulevard will also likely be a budget issue since the Atlanta Regional Commission has indicated there are no funds for the million-plus dollar project to create a southern thoroughfare into Coweta County. "There's no way to fund that out of the general fund," Brown said. "You're talking millions of dollars." There are some projects Brown is interested in getting into the upcoming budget, including several land purchases to secure land for greenspace and other uses before it is developed commercially. Those opportunities will disappear quickly if not acted on, Brown said, but he indicated he would like to investigate using a special purpose local option sales tax or a bond issue to pay for the purchases. Brown declined to cite the tracts of land he's interested in because he doesn't want someone else to purchase the land before the city has the opportunity. Brown also wants to find a way to fund some of the projects for the Ga. Highway 54 West corridor that were developed as part of the city's Liveable Centers Initiative plan. The plan, approved by the ARC, could involve getting matching funds from the regional planning agency, which is high on the city's use of the cart path system for alternative transportation.
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