>> CITY OF MILLEDGEVILLE
The Milledgeville City Council approved its budget for the new fiscal year with little fanfare this past Tuesday, with no discussion before the unanimous vote took place.
The new budget takes effect July 1, and with it will come some salary increases. While no figures were released Tuesday night, City Manager Hank Griffeth confirmed there were some significant increases in city employees’ pay.
“These raises were based on an updated pay scale where the lowest starting salary for the city is equal to $15 per hour. The updated scale was then used to provide appropriate salary levels for all Milledgeville staff members,” said Griffeth.
Griffeth stated Tuesday night that he would be meeting with department heads Wednesday to share the salary levels of their staff members.
Griffeth estimated last week that, not including benefits, it would cost the city $290,000 to increase the pay of the lower-salaried employees to $15 per hour. Several weeks ago, he felt that about 90 percent of the budget increases this year were about salaries.
“The remainder of the budget was based on requests from the department heads and the ability of the city to fund those requests,” Griffeth commented Tuesday night.
Much of the discussion at the last budget session in Milledgeville centered on alternative funding sources.
“Additional revenue which will be required to fund and sustain the budgeted items, long term, will continue to be discussed,” Griffeth said Tuesday after the vote.
City council’s last official budget discussion took place late last week during a planning session at the Georgia Municipal Association (GMA) annual convention in Savannah.
Griffeth told the mayor and council, during the work session, that his budget proposal at that time included a one-mill tax hike, up to 11.12, the first increase since 2018. That rate, however, will not be set until fall, when assessments are completed and the tax digest is finalized, and it is unknown at this time what rate was actually used in preparing the budget that passed Tuesday night.
Council member Walter Reynolds said the base salary adjustment was needed.
“The city’s decision to move to a minimum hourly rate of $15 was part of an effort to ensure that our pay scale was competitive with the rest of the labor market,” Reynolds commented Wednesday morning. “Employee retention, recruiting, and adjustments that were fair to existing employees were all high priorities for the council.”
In his presentation last week on additional funding, Griffeth discussed five possible sources: annexations, the one-mill tax increase, fees derived from an amusement machine ordinance, an excise tax on alcohol drinks, and an increase in license fees for the right to sell alcoholic beverages.
Griffeth pointed out several properties that could be annexed, and with the annexation would come city taxes.
Reynolds also stated Milledgeville needs an ordinance to help regulate amusement machines, pointing out that there are approximately 30 business entities that have the machines and an average of at least three per location.
“There’s almost no convenience store, not any liquor store you can go in and they don’t have some type of amusement machines,” he told council members.
In suggesting the possibility of an excise tax on the sale of mixed drinks, Griffeth learned that Tybee Island charges three percent per drink and realized approximately $275,000 last year. For discussion purposes, Griffeth used $200,000 as a possible revenue source for Milledgeville. Council member Steve Chambers noted that Tybee Island’s sales could be higher or lower at times due to tourist seasons.
Griffeth gave some examples of the amounts other cities levy in license fees for the sale of alcohol. Generally, Milledgeville ranked on the lower end of that spectrum.
The possible revenue from the five sources discussed would total an estimated $1.1 million annually, Griffeth told the mayor and council. He reminded them that the maximum cost for all the salary adjustments, including benefits, was only about $200,000 more.
He also said that, should these ordinances be adopted and go into effect Jan. 1, midway through the city’s fiscal year, there is another temporary funding source available. Milledgeville still has over $1.1 million that was received from the federal government as part of the pandemic recovery funding.
“That is money we could utilize some of to fund salary increases for the first six months,” Griffeth said.