City of Jackson’s Budget Review Committee meets

JACKSON, Tenn — A committee takes a closer look at the budget for the city of Jackson.

“We’re spending more than we are taking in,” said Randy Wallace, chairman of the Budget Review Committee.

Wednesday, the newly formed committee met for the second time to take a closer look at the city’s finances.

“The committee was actually put together because the city over the last couple of years has been spending more money than we’ve taken in and that’s been a concern of the city council. We are looking at ways that we can alleviate that problem,” Wallace said.

This year, the city is millions of dollars behind.

“We’re probably going to end up three and a half to four million (dollars) short,” Wallace said.

The committee is comprised of three Jackson City Council members and two Jackson citizens. They must now look at ways to raise revenue or cut expenses which might include raising property taxes.

“One thing someone had mentioned was had we been going up on our property taxes by a penny per year each year, we wouldn’t be in the problem we are in now. We haven’t increased our property tax rate in forever and because of that it has slowly slowly caught up with us over the years,” Wallace said.

Now the committee is asking each department to submit a 5-year capital plan so they can plan for the future.

“If the city council all of a sudden said we are going up on property taxes by 5 cents, then the public is not going to be happy with that,” Wallace said.

Now they want to raise awareness and educate the public.

“We’re looking at focus groups to come together and see what the city needs and have some of the direction come from the citizens instead of just the government,” Wallace said.

The city has a fund balance left over from previous years to operate on for this year.

The committee wants to get ahead of the issue because they will not be able to do that in the future

The next meeting is February 8 at 3:30 p.m. at City Hall.