Mayor Conger breaks down city budget, provides clarification
JACKSON, Tenn. — Jackson’s budget committee has recommended that the city council approve bond requests of up to $36 million proposed by the mayor.
Since Mayor Conger has been in office, the city has cut down on a lot of debt. We asked if these bonds will get us closer to where we were before then.
“Yeah. It will. But it gets us in a much better payback mode. You only get charged interest as you pull the money down. There’s several options that we could do. So the interest payment will not be that much, the bond payment won’t be that much cause it’s only getting charged what we pull down. So as we do that over 2 or 3 years the cash flow happens and we’ll be able to pay that back and you see the growth organically,” said Mayor Conger.
Sale of land for Great Wolf location
In December’s council meeting, the council approved the budget amendment to recognize the sale of land for the Great Wolf Lodge. It still has to go through another vote. This amount is just under $1.1 million. So now that we have recognized that we have the money, we asked Mayor Conger what do we do with that money after that?
“I think a council member asked that question in the December meeting. I said if you want to make a motion to earmark that money for where it goes then that’s up to the council. At that time, they didn’t. Now they can come back in the January meeting and say ‘Hey we want that money to go to capital, we want that money to go somewhere and earmark it.’ Without it being earmarked or directed somewhere, then it goes to the general fund,” said Mayor Conger.
Old Service Merchandise building
We were also able to ask Mayor Conger to give us an update regarding the Service Merchandise building. As there are plans to potentially spend money to clear the land.
“We contracted with JLL. So they’re doing the study. They’re going to do the actual plan for it on the feasibility study — true market analysis feasibility — if Jackson, not just that site, but if Jackson can handle the arena, convention center, multi-use hotels, and things like that. Once we get the thumbs up or thumbs down — if it’s a thumbs up, then the plan is to utilize JLL’s contract to go find a private developer for us to hand over a ready-made lot to do that development. Because the city does not need to be in the hotel business, the convention center, arena, I’m not trying to go book acts or anything like that. So let a private developer, [a] private company do that. If it’s thumbs down, then we pivot and find the highest and best use for that property and they can do that in their analysis,” said Mayor Conger.
The mayor also told us that he believes everything that this bond request covers is important, but the main things to him are the ones that cover public safety and infrastructure.
Clarifying recent bond request changes
In November, when the Jackson’s budget committee requested the city council to approve a bond request of $36 million. This was supposed to be on the agenda for December’s council meeting, but was taken off due to multiple council members having questions. When referring to these requests, the amount to be borrowed has ranged from $32 million and $36 million. We asked Mayor Conger morning to clarify the differences between those two numbers.
“So when you are going to buy a house, right? You get the pre-approval from the bank saying ‘Hey, this person can borrow up to this.’ Well, we’re setting that limit. We’re not having someone else set it for us. We’re saying: ‘This is the max amount, this is the pre-approval letter of — this is what we’re going to do.’ So, the resolutions that will be potentially be on the January agenda will be just that. Setting up the pre-approval to go talk to bond issuances,” said Mayor Conger.
Mayor Conger says that they will not borrow that much.
In June, the city’s budget committee suggested a $12-$15 million in bond issue. So a significant increase has been made to get to the current request.
We asked Mayor Conger what were the talks to go from the $12 to $15 million to now the $32 to $36 million?
“Several things happened. Great Wolf moved to close the land. When you sit in limbo for so long you don’t want to obligate yourself when you don’t have building a road to nowhere. Great wolf closed on the land so we’re looking for other opportunities. I had a conversation with the staff and finance staff about fees because you’ve got to pay fees when you borrow money. Instead of the death by a thousand cuts of ‘let’s look at this this and this’ in the future, let’s try to do it in one bulk step, get a lot of things done that will have a return on investment in the future,” said Mayor Conger.
“You don’t want to take on debt to do the basic things you have to do year in and year out. You want to have a plan that your revenue funds that.
This was a statement Mayor Conger told us in 2019. He also said, in that interview, that the is to only borrow money for big projects.
We asked Mayor Conger if he feels like these bond requests reflect that statement?
“You can have a plan. None of us plan for the cost of things to go up so much. None of us plan for the interest rates to go up so much. At the end of the day you never want to do it, but if you do it responsibly, then I think that’s important to do. We’re not just doing things to maintain services. A lot of this is to complete the animal care center, to upgrade netting at the ballpark, to actually start to rebuild Airways Boulevard, our matching piece to put sidewalks on North Parkway, building the Great Wolf Lodge road, and then turfing infields. Those are things that have an ROI on them going forward,” said Mayor Conger.
The city council will meet for their work session to discuss these bond requests Thursday, December 12, at 3 p.m. in city hall.
We will let you know all of the details regarding the city council’s work session after it concludes.
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