Council Member at Large Kim Ecklund presents budget amendments at City Council voting session (November 28, 2022)
There will be no tax increase and no parking meter increase in the 2023 City Budget passed by Jamestown City Council.
There were 27 amendments voted on by Council.
Finance Chair and Council member at Large Kim Ecklund said some of those amendments were to deal with $400,000 in issues she found while analyzing the budget, “As many people know, I’m a numbers person and I asked for the nitty gritty, down to every line item in the budget. And going through each line item and each detailed item in that budget instead of just the book you have seen, I analyzed every line, every expense from expenses to salaries and found some things that were missed, some things that were doubled, and some whatever the case may be. And to that tune, it was roughly around $400,000.”
Ecklund said the amendment to cut $157,500 from the Bond Principal line is an example of an issue she found, saying that amount shouldn’t have been included in the budget.
Jamestown City Council amendments to 2023 City Budget
One of the amendments approved reduced parking meter revenue by $127,000. That amendment was directly correlated with cutting a proposed increase in downtown meter rates from 25-cents to 50-cents a half hour.
Council member at Large Jeff Russell said you often see higher parking fees in other larger cities, “You know, I don’t think we’re always like other major cities. We’re hopefully in the tail end of the Pandemic and we’re out of that. I don’t think it’s fair to be pumping this money into our businesses, through ARPA funding, and then turn around and raise meter rates and discourage people from coming downtown.”
Council also approved an amendment increasing the Jamestown Police Department‘s budget by $40,000 to allow them to purchase a new car. Council member Marie Carrubba, who introduced the amendment, said this was to help get the department on a rotation with replacing vehicles.
Other notable increases to department budgets through amendments included adding $46,926 to the Police Department’s salaries line to address concerns by the Police Chief that the SWAT Team, training and education, an K9 Handler lines were underfunded. Council also added a total of $54,000 to the Fire Department‘s equipment lines to aide them in purchasing new turn-out gear for 10 firefighters and to replace ropes for bail-out gear.
Council also added a total of $20,000 back into the Parks Department‘s Flags and Banners and Horticulture supplies lines. Both had been totally cut in Mayor Eddie Sundquist‘s proposed budget. Parks Manager Dan Stone had said in his budget presentation that without the horticulture funds, he couldn’t purchase flowers, shrubs, or mulch for flower beds or flower pots in the city.
Council approved raising the projected sales tax revenue line by $75,000.
Ecklund said increasing that line is a gamble, “I have concerns and I’ve made that clear to every council member in this process that although I’m willing to accept it and move forward that you don’t know what the economy to do next week, much less next month. I have concerns because inflation is still high, gas prices are high, the sales tax (holiday) is coming off at the end of the year, discretionary funds could change. Will gas prices, taxes go up? What’s that balancing act?”
Council did have to approve allocating $54,879.20 from the General Fund Balance in order to have a budget with no tax increase. With that allocation, that leaves the fund balance total at $5,828,590 dollars.
Council President Tony Dolce said while American Rescue Plan funds helped purchase a lot of equipment earlier this year, there were still items council wanted to include in this budget “So it just took some jockeying around a few different lines. And again, there were some mistakes that were found in the budget that had to be rectified, so it took time to rectify those mistakes and adjustments and different things, particularly in Public Safety, that we felt the turn-out gear for the Fire Department, the vehicles for the Police Department, those type of things that are important to the community.”
Mayor Sundquist now has five business days to submit any vetoes of those amendments. By City Charter, Council then has until December 15 to vote to override any of those vetoes.
Leave a Reply