“Balanced and legit.”
That’s how Warner Robins Mayor Donald Walker described the city’s Fiscal Year 2009.
What sort of effort did it take to get it to that point?
“I feel like I’m married to you,” Walker joked to City Comptroller Bill Harte and in regard to the long hours they had poured over it. In all the budget, which was submitted for a public hearing Monday during the city council meeting, is $33,562,859. (Note: Nobody spoke – pro or con – in its regard, which came as no surprise to Walker. He said in 15 years he’s only had one person speak up once.)
Seventy-seven percent of the budget – $25,900,151 – represents Salaries and Benefits. And of the Salaries and Benefits, the biggest chunk is $16,665,783, which is slated to go toward Public Safety. In General Government, $4,042,538 is allocated, while in the area of Culture and Recreation, $1,214,517 is budgeted.
In addition, $7,022,208 is allowed for Operations and $640,500 for Capital. Under both, Public Safety again represents the largest portion. Those numbers are $2,136,133 and $397,000, respectively.
Of particular interest to employees, Walker pointed out, was the addition of a 4 percent raise.
Of particular interest to Joe Citizen was a millage rate decrease – about “two -10ths (.02),” Walker said, “on a $85,000,000 rollback value ... we got reassessed. So this is a revenue mutual budget on taxes ... on property taxes.”
Also of interest is a 10 percent increase in water and sewage – the last increase was in March 2006, Harte said. According to the new ordinance this represents about a 16-cent increase for single and multi-residential water service. For multi-commercial and industrial users, it will increase to $8.82 per ERC “for commercial and industrial users where the ERC factors by meter size.”
Storm water drainage rates are also slated to increase from $2.75 to $3.25 per unit, while dumpster rates will go from $2.65 per cubic yard to $3,75 cubic yard.
The council has said (their ad on page 3A) the budget will be adopted at their regularly scheduled June 16 meeting.
