Jackson City Council approves budget, bids farewell to 5 members

JACKSON, Tenn. — The Jackson City Council met Tuesday morning, and for some members, it was their final meeting.

There were only two items on the agenda. The first one was the vote to approve of next year’s budget, which was approved nine to zero.

“We’ve been able to fund our entire capitol budget from surpluses,” said Mayor Scott Conger. “So just like you do in your household, you save money to pay for things, and so that’s what we’re doing. I think you look overall, our sales tax has increased. We’ve projected a pretty flat property tax increase. Because we know we have new properties being built, new properties online, but we don’t want to account for those just yet.”

Mayor Conger also talked about some of the priorities they had when formulating this budget.

“So our priorities are making sure that our services are provided. We want to be able to provide services at an adequate level,” Conger said. “We’ve increased officer pay, we’ve increased firefighter pay, central dispatch pay, first responders. We’ve done some other things to incentivize retention and recruitment.”

Mayor Conger mentioned that $12.5 million was the peak debt service payment. He says because of that, they had to tighten the budget a little bit, knowing that next year it will drop to $6.2 million, which will free up some capitol for Fiscal Year 25.

“Knowing that our spending was going to be tight to make sure that we live within our means getting to FY-25. So we see that 6.3 million come back to us so we can spend it on fire stations and fire trucks and those things that we need to do,” said Conger.

After the budget was approved, the council members who will not be returning got a chance to speak about their time serving the city.

Councilman David Cisco, Councilman Ross Priddy, Councilwoman Tara Skinner, Councilman Paul Taylor, and Councilman Sam Turner gave their thanks for the opportunity to serve.

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