Eureka Springs City Council met on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day to make last-minute changes to the 2020 budget before the vote next Monday night. Aldermen and Mayor Butch Berry discussed only a select few items at length – primarily the Parks Commission’s tax revenue paper trail onto the city’s budget and the reallocation of $3,000 for aldermen travel expenses, moving it from the Mayor’s office to a council line item.
Alderman Bob Thomas championed both requests for the purposes of financial transparency and to remedy what he said is an inappropriate process. Parks’ paper trail was approved, however, there was not enough council momentum to reallocate council’s travel expenses away from the Mayor.
Thomas, an avid follower of proper government processes, is known as an advocate for the separation of administrative and legislative roles. He argued that reallocation of the travel expenses provides for a separation of duties; where the mayor should act as administrator of the city’s functions and aldermen should act as the city’s legislative function.
Thomas said that at no time should the mayor have control over aldermen’s decisions, and vice versa. The mayor, who does not see eye-to-eye with Thomas on this responded saying, “That’s just an opinion.”
Thomas said that council needs to set its own policy for using its own travel funds, and he drafted a policy for usage of professional development funds which would authorize each of the six aldermen to use $500 for a reduced line item of $3,000 as opposed to sharing the mayor’s current travel budget of $6,000.
As it is, and as it will stay for another year since Thomas’s request went unsupported, when the aldermen make travel arrangements for training purposes they must request approval travel funds from the mayor.
COLAs approved
Other than arguing semantics for almost an hour, alderman Harry Meyer did bring up a couple new items for short discussion, including why the mayor’s office budget for salaries is rising from $198,688 to $234,154. While Berry did not make a statement as to where the bulk of those new salary funds would go, he did say that he approved a 2 percent cost-of-living-adjustment with a 1 percent provisional merit raise for all employees.
Meyer reminded the mayor that there are some Public Works employees who were making below $10 an hour before the first of the year. Scoffing at the infinitesimal 2 percent COLA raise for a worker making minimum wage, Meyer asked, “What is two percent of ten dollars?” He said Eureka Springs is losing skilled public works laborers to Holiday Island, Berryville, and Carroll County because of its low salaries and slow raises.
“It’s a moral issue,” Meyer contended, urging the mayor and council to consider making departmental budgetary adjustments to raise Public Works salaries to a livable wage. Meyer mentioned neither the city’s Police Department nor the Fire Department has such low paid workers and asked why Public Works employees are valued less.
“People need to be paid,” he said, “We are losing good employees.” When Meyer prompted council to make changes to the budget, Berry cut him off saying, “We cannot do that immediately without the funding.”
Meyer countered, “There’s money in the budget, there’s money in the street’s budget.” He argued toward reallocating budgetary funds within the departments pointing to the document in his hand saying, “We have the money.”
But Mayor Berry discouraged that conversation and Thomas interjected that it is too late in the budget process to make these types of changes.
Alderman Terry McClung was sympathetic to Meyer’s point saying the city does need to find some way to restructure for the sake of raising salaries above minimum wage but offered no suggestions, while alderman Susan Harman and the mayor shared the belief that the decision for pay increases needs to come from the department heads, not city council.
Ultimately the 2020 budgeted salaries remained unchanged.
The nitty gritty
So how does the City 2020 budget look in a nutshell? Overall in 2019 the city earned about $10.2 million and in 2020 is expected to have revenues of $10.8 million. Starting with the streets, last year the city spent $820,531; $400,000 went to street maintenance and $181,477 went to salaries and wages.
- This year the City anticipates using a street budget of $1,084,719 bumping up street maintenance to $600,000 and salaries to $204,785.
- Next, the water department, which is raising its budget from $643,673 to $1,085,166 primarily due to a $275,800 federal grant. Water salaries, however, are budgeted lower than 2019 from $79,292 to $73,608.
- The wastewater budget is rising from $827,802 to $974,671 but lowering the salary budget from $147,215 to $141,964.
- Transit’s budget in 2019 was $1,324,998 and for 2020 is $1,526,466. Transit salaries in 2019 were $566,000 and in 2020 a bit lower at $540,459, while Transit capital expenditures are rising from $278,000 to $518,000.
- The General Fund which has a reduced budget from $3.789 million in 2019 to the 2020 budget of $3.754 million. Within the General Fund is the mayor’s office, finance office, police department, municipal court, fire/EMS, building department and city clerk.
- The mayor’s office it has a salary increase from $198,688 to $234,154 with all other line items holding relatively fixed. Finance office salaries rise from $176,535 to $186,308 with all other lines holding steady.
- ESPD budget was $1.282 million in 2019 and $1.287 million in 2020 with salaries at $771,870 in 2019 and $783,105 in 2020. Municipal Court lowered its budget from $144,621 in 2019 to $133,969 in 2020; it also lowered its estimated salaries from $68,343 in 2019 to $61,680 in 2020.
- Fire/EMS is holding salaries at $638,970 with a total budget rising from $1.244 million to $1.253 million. The Building Department is lowering its budget from $123,867 in 2019 to $90,453 reducing both its rehab expenses by $20,000 and sidewalk repair by $15,000.
- The city clerk has relatively little change in the budget from $34,842 to $36,895. City Council is anticipated to vote on the 2020 budget in its entirety at the next meeting, Monday, Jan. 27 at 6 p.m. in the Auditorium.