City approves budget with 6-3 vote, may enter further debt for road repair
JACKSON, Tenn. — The Jackson City Council made their final vote Friday morning to pass the largest budget in history for the City in a 6 to 3 vote.
There was very minimal discussion regarding the budget before a motion was passed to end the discussion, while some questions were still being asked.
One of the main discussions lately has been with salary increases. Everyone has been in agreement with increases for the Police and Fire Departments.
After this proposed budget has been passed, patrol officers will start at $56,000 per year, going up to $72,000 per year depending on their years of service. Most officers are on the higher end of their payscale. They are also eligible for overtime. A major’s salary will go to $100,000 a year, deputy chief’s will go to almost a $105,000 and the Chief goes to $131,000.
Another main concern was that this budget had no funding for roads. An idea was brought forward to borrow over $7 million dollars for road repair.
Councilmember Marda Wallace says she would rather the money come from revenue, however she is glad that roads can be repaired.
“I have said that I would not vote for this budget unless it had money for infrastructure in it,” Wallace said. “With the reconstruction, and with the passing of this budget, it will have at least 7.4 million for our roads. I say that’s not enough, but at least it’s a start.”
Borrowing the money will add to the City’s current debt of roughly $50 million. Councilmember Larry Lowrance has concerns.
“I’m glad we’re fixing roads, everybody’s glad. We desperately needed it,” Lowrance said. “I am concerned that we’re having to borrow all of it to do it. Back five months ago, we thought we had plenty of money. We had $12 million in debt services, and this year we were only going to need $6 million. So that was going to free up $6 million. Several of us had already talked about that $6 million needs to go to capital, which is roads.”
The question that remains is how the City will afford this large budget beyond Fiscal Year 25.
“How do you pay back debt? You got to have the money, and when we don’t have the money in the budget we’ll have to raise taxes,” said Lowrance. “So that’s why I like to make sure we’ve got our government as tight as we can before we start going out and borrowing money. I’m repeating here, 20% growth in two years and yet we have to borrow money for roads.”
Even with the talks regarding roads, there is currently no money budgeted to fix roads.
The City will need to get the debt issue approved by the Comptroller’s Office and vote on it before they will have money for roads.
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