Budget committee meets to talk Jackson finances

JACKSON, Tenn. — With budget challenges quickly approaching the city of Jackson, the budget committee met Tuesday for the first time this fiscal year, and they got straight to business.

Budget committee chairman Paul Taylor says he spent the last three weeks analyzing the city’s budget, and now it’s time to start making changes.

“We’ll try to not be as reactive and start to move into a more proactive budgeting cycle,” Taylor said.

He and the other five members of the budget committee started detailing the changes they wanted to make, including more oversight to department budgets.

“One of the things we’re transitioning from is communicating the why’s, why we’re doing things,” Taylor said.

As well as saving money, they’re looking at getting money through bonds.

“It’s still out. We’re sending out a request for proposals for those. Initial numbers show that could be anywhere in the approximation of $2.4 million,” Taylor said.

They’re also differentiating between what work needs to be done now and what can be pushed off to the future.

“When the initial requests went out, some of the requests I received were for only this fiscal year, needs of replacing certain HVAC equipment, safety apparatuses needed by both the fire and police departments, street resurfacing,” Taylor said.

Taylor says while they are making budget cuts for this upcoming fiscal year, that still isn’t going to be enough. They agreed to present a resolution to the City Council next month to borrow up to $6 million.

“Because now we as a committee start to look even deeper at this, I think we’re somewhere between five, five and six [million dollars] is where we’ll end up,” Taylor said.

As far as undoing deals Mayor Jerry Gist made years ago, Mayor Scott Conger said they can’t undo the past, only make changes for the future.