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PTC budget cut another 1.5 percentThu, 07/12/2007 - 7:15pm
By: John Munford
Peachtree City officials have achieved further savings in the upcoming 2007-08 budget, largely by factoring in salary savings from ongoing vacant positions in the city’s police department. Combined with a few other trims, the new budget allows the City Council to avoid a millage rate increase and significantly cut the amount of money used out of cash reserves. The previous version of the budget, called for using $1.28 million in excess cash savings, but that number shrank to $852,000. Altogether it was enough for council to seemingly agree to a consensus at Thursday night’s workshop. That sets up the city for a public hearing on the budget at the regularly scheduled City Council meeting Thursday night at 7 p.m. Even though the 1.5 percent budget cut requested by Mayor Harold Logsdon is coming from salary savings, a list of potential line item cuts was proposed for each department, and that list in part drew some ire from Councilwoman Judi-ann Rutherford, though she said it was “a good exercise.” Rutherford was especially critical about a proposed cut of $10,000 from the finance department that was earmarked for the yearly audit. Finance Director Paul Salvatore said if the audit came in over budget he would have to find funding elsewhere to pay for the audit. Rutherford said because the audit is necessary, that “cut” wasn’t a realistic one. In addition to the salary savings, the city is also funding some critical fire/EMS purchases such as new radios from salary savings in the current year’s budget, said City Manager Bernie McMullen. Also, $56,000 was removed from the budget after determining the funds for street supplies could come out of the city’s Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax revenues. The budget includes three new police officers and six new firefighters, adding two firefighters per shift to the city’s compliment. Also included are a full-time assistant city planner who will be hired on a contract basis for one year and a building maintenance specialist who will be hired after several vacancies take effect in the city’s public works department, which is starting to contract out some mowing services. The budget also bumps up the starting pay for police officers and corporals by 4.5 percent in a bid to make salaries more attractive and lure more recruits. McMullen pointed out that Peachtree City is different from other governments, all of whom tend to spend more money at the end of the year to justify asking for more in the following year’s budget. Peachtree City, instead, spends year-end “leftover” funds on only necessary items and returns the rest to the city’s general fund, McMullen indicated. Salvatore said the 1.5 percent additional salary savings, in addition to the 2 percent already factored into the budget, was possible due to the “unusually high number of vacancies in the police department.” He added that the savings was on a one-time basis and could not be factored into the 2008-09 budget. Police Chief James Murray said the department had five officers going into police academy starting next week, but it would still leave the department with several vacancies. Once the department gets back up to its full compliment of officers, Murray said he would be able to assign the three new officers in this year’s budget for patrolling the city’s cart path. login to post comments
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