The City Council of Milledgeville concluded one of its more important annual duties this past Tuesday evening by adopting the municipality’s 2024-25 operating budget.
“We have worked the last nine Tuesday evenings plus one Friday afternoon to get a budget, which I hope you will vote to approve tonight,” City Manager Hank Griffeth said during his report, “and I appreciate you letting me be a part of that for another year.”
The motion to adopt the budget passed unanimously with no discussion.
Griffeth said before the meeting that department heads submitted their requests in late March for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
“Department heads presented budget requests to mayor and council during regular meetings and called work sessions between April 9 and April 23,” Griffeth said. “A draft budget was presented to mayor and council during the April 23 regular council meeting.”
The city manager said a lot more work was required to prepare the budget for adoption this week.
“Discussion continued with mayor and council at regular meetings and called work sessions between April 30 and June 7,” he noted.
While salaries did not dominate discussions as they did last year when significant increases were approved, the topic of personnel again was prevalent throughout the process. Council members have been wrangling with a system of salary increases that is predictable and sustainable.
“Salaries will increase for current employees based on a tenure formula,” Griffeth pointed out, adding, “The pay scale was re-centered with the FY 2023-2024 budget.”
The goal of the formula is to give employees the maximum amount of credit for their time of service with the city.
“The tenure formula takes into consideration an employee’s time in the current job and overall time being employed by the city,” Griffeth explained. “This process served as a reward for those employees who stuck with the City when others were leaving, especially during COVID-crazed salary chasing and also stratified the payroll based on years of service.
“Salary increases averaged approximately 4% across the board with that tenure formula,” Griffeth added.
Griffeth indicated predictions for non-salaried costs were based on available figures.
“Operating funds for departments have been increased by 5% based on the 2023 average inflation rate to be 4.1%,” he commented. “We will complete a thorough review of all budgets beginning in the 2nd and 3rd quarter and determine if budget amendments are necessary and how those can be funded.”
Griffeth pointed out no significant line items are included in the general fund budget.
“There are no specific big projects in this budget,” he noted. “We tend to fund large projects with SPLOST proceeds and will continue to do so.”
The city manager gave no specific dollar amounts for revenues to offset the expenses.
“Fees that will be increasing as part of what was passed include Planning & Zoning, building inspections, park rental, alcohol license applications and residential water meter and tap fees.
“There probably will be more to come,” Griffeth added, “with an overhaul in the Occupational Tax formula and water rates to support bond issuance for the water and sewer system.”