City of Jackson shares its 5-year capital budget request summary

November 25, 2024

Ryan Hodges,

JACKSON, Tenn. — We have obtained information regarding the City of Jackson’s capital budget request for the next five years.

In July, the Jackson City Council approved the largest budget in its history. It included spending money from its reserve fund to balance the budget.

SEE ALSO: City approves budget with 6-3 vote, may enter further debt for road repair

Voters and viewers expressed their disappointment in the lack of funding to fix and repair the deteriorating streets all across the city.

At that time, it was recommended to borrow $12 million for street repair, police vehicles and other items. This amount would bring the city’s debt to roughly $60 million.

“And so we knew that we needed to improve a problem in the budget by not having an increase in taxes. That was going to be an important thing. We don’t increase taxes this year. We’ve had a lot of increases in other things for families. We didn’t want to increase taxes,” said Frank McMeen, city council member and chairman on the Budget Committee.

Last week, the city’s Budget Committee went well beyond the earlier proposed $12 million to over $30 million. This would bring the debt to $80 million.

For now, we will just look at fiscal year 25′ as there are many items of note in this particular section. To start, there will be spending of $228,000 on a replacement server and replacement workstations for information technology.

In the section for the mayor’s office, there is a total of $1.7 million for the homeless shelter. The city has already paid over $200k for the first shelter that they decided not to build.

For the Jackson Police Department’s admin section, there is $128k for technology upgrade packages. For the police patrol section, there is $14k for a drone, and $1.6 million for 25 vehicles.

For the sportsplex, there are $4 million allocated for a Turf Infield Project. At the budget committee meeting that was held last week, Jackson Mayor Scott Conger told us how this will be beneficial.

“This will allow us to not cancel any tournaments and not shorten any tournaments. Right now, sometimes they’ll come in, and they’ll have games on Friday, maybe not Saturday, and maybe pack it all in on Sunday. So this allows them to not cancel those tournaments and not shorten those tournaments. It gives us a much better opportunity for more teams to come in and utilize our sportsplex, stay in our hotels, eat at our restaurants, and shop in our stores,” said Mayor Conger.

Finally, in the section for non-department specific capital budget requests, there is $2 million for the Jackson Plaza, and $1.9 million for the Public Safety Complex.

Street paving, one of the top issues expressed by citizens, is budgeted for only $7 million, while they are proposing to spend $6.5 million on a road for the Great Wolf Lodge.