Public works will get needed new equipment next fiscal year, but the city will have to dip into its cash reserves to buy it.
In a special-call meeting Tuesday at City Hall, the city council approved purchasing a mini excavator, a bucket truck and a leaf vacuum truck for the department and including them in the Fiscal Year 2026 budget.
Chief Financial Officer Jim Brigham estimated the equipment would cost about $650,000, and it would require the city dip into its cash reserves to the tune of $516,000 to help cover it. Otherwise, the budget for next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, would have a deficit.
Though the council’s vote to approve the purchases was unanimous, Ward 3 Councilman Rusty Greene voiced reservations.
The leaf vacuum truck, the biggest ticket item of the three, requires a commercial driver’s license to operate. Public works has recently had difficulty hiring and keeping operators with CDLs.
“We’ve got a $350,000 street sweeper we haven’t cranked up in quite a while because we can’t find a driver,” Greene said. “… Does it make sense to buy some equipment that doesn’t require a CDL, so that anybody can go out there and drive it? I’m really worried that we’re going to end up with a $400,000 leaf vac truck and we still can’t get a driver.”
Casey Bush, public works director, noted the department had hired two drivers with CDLs earlier this month. Before that, he told Greene, the department did not have a designated street sweeper operator for about four months, relying instead on the department’s assistant director.
Greene pitched buying several cheaper units that any public works employee could drive for $75,000 each. They may not be as durable, he admitted, but they wouldn’t sit dormant due to staffing issues.
“That’s a whole lot more savings and a whole lot more equipment than just having one truck for the whole city where there’s a possibility it won’t even crank because we don’t have anybody to drive it,” Greene said.
Bush pushed back, advocating for better equipment.
“You’re still putting money down the drain, Mr. Greene,” he said. “So, buy something that’s going to last. Even if we have to find somebody to drive it. We still have a machine there. … Heck, I’ve got a CDL. I’ll get in there and drive it myself.”
Other council members sided with Bush.
Ward 6 Councilman Jason Spears said he felt a “new sense of optimism” associated with working for the city, and he believes that will help draw and retain more qualified people in public works, a department that historically suffers from high employee turnover. Equipping the department properly should help capitalize on that momentum, he said.
Vice Mayor Ethel Stewart, who represents Ward 1, agreed.
“If you want the city to improve the way we promised the citizens we would do, we have to give them the equipment to do their job,” Stewart said. “Once we get them the equipment, it is up to us to make sure they are doing what they should be doing.”
The council voted last week not to raise the city’s property tax rate next year, leaving it at 53 mills. If it had raised taxes to accommodate the equipment purchases without dipping into its reserve fund, the hike would have been at least 2.32 mills. A mill is used to measure property taxes.
That would have raised a homeowner’s taxes by $23.20 for every $100,000 of property value and a business owner’s taxes by $34.80 for every $100,000 of property value.
“I’m not for raising (taxes) right now,” Mayor Stephen Jones told The Dispatch after the meeting. “It affects our citizens. It affects me. So, if I don’t want it, I don’t want to give it to the citizens either. I think we have enough in reserve that we can take it out of reserve as a one-time purchase.”
Brigham told The Dispatch the city should end Fiscal Year 2025 on Sept. 30 with about $5 million in cash reserves. In addition to the $516,000 coming out for public works, the current budget draft includes another $1 million from that reserve to put toward finishing the Sen. Terry Brown Amphitheater on The Island. That is on top of the $1 million the city received from the state for that project, he said.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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