The Jamestown City Council holds its first budget meeting for the 2016 budget on Monday, Oct. 20, 2015.
JAMESTOWN – The Jamestown City Council has started to process of reviewing the 2016 executive budget, which includes $35.1 million in spending and calls for a tax hike of 5.6 percent.
On Monday night the council met with the department heads for the Department of Public Works, Parks Department and Youth Services.
The department heads spent much of their time going over their initial budget requests for next year, while also explaining how the budget adjustments made by the they mayor will impact their operations. The issue of aging equipment was a particular concern for both the DPW and Parks department, which said that after several years of working toward updating and replacing the city’s aging fleet, it is again back sliding and they are now concerned that some vehicles could soon be beyond repair, while others could pose a safety issue for city workers.
The city council did not make any recommendations on spending adjustments following the budget session.
Following the meeting, City council president and finance committee member Greg Rabb acknowledged it’s going to be difficult trying to identify further cuts.
“Tonight we started to go through the numbers with DPW and Parks, and you can see already that some significant cuts have been made to the point that we’re close if not already cutting it to the bone,” Rabb said. “We’re going to look through all of it and hopefully we can make some cuts, but it’s not going to be easy.”
Monday’s budget meeting was the first of several on the schedule for the next few weeks. Rabb said the council needs to finalize and approve the budget by the end of November.
“There’s a voting session on Nov. 30, which is right before the deadline. We have to adopt a budget [by then] or the mayor’s budget will go into effect,” Rabb said. “Obviously tonight was the first hearing when we had the opportunity through the finance committee to go over part of the budget. we’ll do it again next week before the voting session, and also on Nov. 2 right before Election Day. Obviously we’re going to keep looking at it.”
The budget deliberations will continue next week at 6:30 p.m. in city hall when the council reviews the budget for the City Clerk, Treasurer, Assessor, Comptroller, Information Services, and Corporation Counsel. It will review the Police and Fire budgets on Nov. 2.
Line-by-line copies of the city budget are available at both the mayor’s office and clerk’s office in city hall, and also at the James Prendergast Library.
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