FY ’10 budget to spend nearly half of city’s property tax millage rate on leisure services

With a variety of passive parks, playgrounds, sports fields and more, it may come as little surprise that Peachtree City spends a significant amount of its budget on recreation.

What may be surprising is how much more it spends than other local governments.

In the upcoming budget year, Peachtree City is projected to spend $4.37 million on recreation, representing 2.524 mills — or nearly half — of the city’s proposed 5.77 mills property tax rate for Fiscal Year 2010.

By comparison, Fayette County projects it will spend $1.19 million on recreation for the entire county, a third of Peachtree City’s budget for leisure activities.

Peachtree City has a population of around 35,000, while Fayette County’s population is a little over 107,000, including Peachtree City.

On the other end of the recreation spectrum, the city of Fayetteville has no budgeted recreation funds because it only has three passive parks, all of which are maintained by the city’s street department. Fayetteville has about 15,000 residents.

Peachtree City’s recreation spending, including that for the city library, represents 16.7 percent of its entire budget.

Only the city’s public safety departments will cost more, at 24.6 percent for law enforcement and 23 percent for fire and EMS services.

The recreation budget for this year has shrunk by $300,000 due to higher fees adopted for the Kedron Fieldhouse and Aquatic Center in conjunction with the elimination of one full-time and three part-time jobs there. Another four full-time recreation jobs were cut this year when the City Council decided to go with a private company for landscaping services.

Earlier this year, the council laid off 19 workers in the Public Works Department and out-sourced their jobs to a private landscaping company.

For the coming year, the city’s Public Works budget is $3.257 million, or 12.4 percent of the new budget. That pays for 30 full-time and one part-time workers, down from 58 total this year before the layoffs.

Public Works is responsible for maintaining city streets and cart paths and their rights of way and all city-owned property.

A breakdown of the city’s recreation spending for the coming fiscal year shows that $2.56 million, more than 58 percent of its budget, is for salaries and other benefit costs for its 32 full-time and 42 part-time employees. The remaining $1.81 million would be spent on other operating costs.

While the main recreation administration budget takes the lion’s share of the recreation funds at $2.4 million, the library comes in second at $1.02 million, followed by the Kedron Fieldhouse at $785,321 and the Gathering Place senior center at $166,742.

The recreation administration component has 20 full-time and 20 part-time employees while the library has seven full-time and 12 part-time employees, the Kedron Fieldhouse has four full-time and eight part-time employees and the Gathering Place has one full-time and two part-time employees.

In the recreation budget are 32 full-time employees and 42 part-time workers, for a total of 74 workers, representing 21 percent of total city employees. These figures, provided by the city’s finance department, include seasonal employees.

Overall, the city is projecting 238 full-time employees and 106 part-time workers, plus five elected officials, for a total of 349 on the city payroll in FY 2010, which begins Oct. 1 this year.