Concerns continue as voting for FY 24-25 budget approaches

JACKSON, Tenn. — The Jackson City Council voted on and passed the first reading for the budget this past Friday.

However, there are still some concerns regarding the spending.

In a 5 to 2 vote Friday morning with two of the council members absent, the budget just needs one more vote in order to fully pass. During this previous meeting, some council members brought up concerns regarding how some of the money is being spent.

“We’ve just got to study these things. We just can’t take what happened last year and add a percent to it. You’ve got to take a look at what each position is,” said Councilman Larry Lowrance.

10-15% increases in salaries for various city employees is being proposed in this budget. In previous meetings, the salary study that was done in 2022 is the one of the factors for these increases. We spoke with Steve Thompson, who conducted the salary study a few days ago, regarding the recommendations from the study and comparing it to the proposed increases for this fiscal year.

“Somehow that equates to $6 million. I don’t know if that math flies, but it’s hard to tell,” said Thompson.

The recommendation from the salary study was to give everyone a 3% raise, and then an additional raise to get them closer to the average market rate. While this study is one of the main reason for the increases in salaries for the current proposed budget, Thompson says the study did not provide data future years such as this one.

“There’s no numbers for ‘here’s where you need to be in 2024 or 2025.’ It doesn’t address any of that,” said Thompson.

We reached out to Mayor Conger on July 8 asking if the proposed salary increases were in line with the compensation study. He did not respond to that question.

The city council will meet again at 9 a.m. on Friday, July 19, at Jackson City hall.

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