Although no draft budget has been prepared and the first public hearing on the topic won’t be held until Aug. 20, the city of Starkville may consider a 1.5 mil property tax increase for Fiscal Year 2020.
During its regular work session Friday, Sandra Sistrunk, the board’s budget chairman, presented a preliminary budget report that would call for almost $400,000 in additional discretionary spending.
The report includes $118,000 for the city’s police and IT departments, $110,000 for re-rating for the fire department and $105,000 in pay raises for employees, primarily those in lower hourly-rate positions.
“I think this is do-able if we are truly committed to employee compensation, to the fire department, to providing the equipment to departments that are going to be required,” Sistrunk said. “There’s not $400,000 somewhere else in the budget.”
With a mil value of $265,000, the 1.5 mil increase would cover all those costs.
“The question we always hear is what will that do to my taxes,” Sistrunk said. “For $100,000 in valuation, this increase would be about $15 a year. If you’re over 65, it would be a lot less, around $4 per year.”
If approved, the city’s millage would increase from 26.63 to 28.13.
The $118,000 for police and IT equipment purchases in Sistrunk’s proposal would help pay for additional security cameras and software to add storage and backup capacity. The police department would also receive a new fingerprint machine to replace its current unit, which Sistrunk said is near the point of becoming obsolete.
The $105,000 in employee pay raises would bring all employees up to $12 per hour. Sistrunk said the pay raises could be implemented around mid-year to reduce the cost. However, Sistrunk said she did not know at this time how many employees would be affected.
The $110,000 to improve the fire department rating from 4 to 3 — which Sistrunk estimated would save homeowners 1 to 5 percent and commercial property owners about 10 percent — would include adding two firefighters to the District 5 station, staffing required for the department to lower its rating.
Ward 1 Alderman Ben Carver pushed back gently on the idea of a tax increase.
“It seems like we have a small tax increase every year,” Carver said. “Every year, it’s a mil or two, it seems.”
But Sistrunk argued that this year, unlike some recent years, the increase in taxes will fund city operations.
“Last year, we did have a small increase,” Sistrunk said. “The ones before were for construction, things like the police station and city hall. They weren’t operational.”
Mayor Lynn Spruill said she supported the plan.
“I think this would be the year that we would say we (commit) to the employees, to the fire department and the things we need to do to bring employees up to a minimum standard,” Spruill said.
Sistrunk reminded the alderman that no budget has been prepared.
“We’re preparing the draft budget as if we are going to fund all of these things,” she said. “We’ll give it to you. We’ll have public hearings. And we can absolutely change things.
“But there’s nothing in this (preliminary budget report) that is not important,” she added.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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