08/08/2017a

[0:00:24] 15 and a half no there's no questions um it was already yeah for life there's another one there about who it is welcome everyone i'm now calling this meeting to order please stand with us we'll be led in prayer by arnold gallagher please remain standing for the pledge of allegiance

[0:02:26] and aldermen pain will lead us today heavenly father lord we thank you so much for the ability to meet here tonight lord lord we pray for your wisdom as we go throughout our budget and we ask for your blessings on our city and you're done we pray states of amen to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay just to remind everyone this uh this is our budget workshop and this meeting is designed to allow uh department heads a few minutes to address the full board talk about priorities we had a meeting on july 6 i laid out a plan this plan was generated after meeting 101 with all the department heads so some of the stuff you know we'll bypass today because it would be a duplication of what we talked about on july the 6th the department heads when you come forward let's try to keep it quick we're going to try to cover a lot in a shorter amount of time as possible so please keep your comments under 10 minutes if you do not need to make comments uh that's fine too just be available for questions i'm going to start with a few of the departments that have a relatively simple discussion some of which has already been presented to me so i'll do the presentation for those and then again the department head is here for any questions from the board again we will have a public budget hearing before the budget is set at that time it will be the official public hearing where citizens or anyone else can ask questions this meeting today is not that this is a workshop between the department heads of the city and the board so there will be no discussion from anyone in the audience so we'll go and get started first of all

[0:04:29] we'll start with the city clerk's office andrea i think yours is pretty simple cut and dry is there anything that you want to add or basically uh the only thing we're doing there is basically bringing salaries up we have new people we're bringing those equal to the other clerks in the office that do the same thing basically that was it was there anything else you were also very helpful and offered to do budget cuts so every department did step up and agree to help us achieve our goal of a 10 budget cut across the board and andrea and her department did that as well was there anything that we needed to add in your department okay did anyone with the board have any questions for andrea or the city clerk okay some of the other departments will get a little more detail so we'll go ahead and move on uh next one is our municipal uh municipal court i did talk with um court clerk thomas maston yesterday again his is pretty cut and dried we'll tell you about a couple of things there again his main thing he had one or two people that that had finished their 12 months that uh we had requested their pay be adjusted to the other uh court clerks that had the same ranking so uh that's that was in my budget plan as well he does have long term plans of renovating the the court the area that is vacant now we're not there yet we start a process last year of going paperless there starting to scan files reorganize the file we have a new software we can put court records electronically which will improve our efficiency and save space with paper so we're in the process now of having a permanent full-time person which thomas

[0:06:32] requested that will help us do that scanning to help us go paperless so until that time we don't need the extra room but when that is done we're going to want to expand the facility where we'd have offices where the current clerks are now we want to make adjustments and use that vacant space that used to be a wellness center is that right all right where the wellness center used to be that's all vacant so we're going to do some renovation that's not needed until 2019 so there's really no other budget request from thomas unless i'm i'm leaving down okay did anyone have any questions for mr thomas madison mayor um mostly just in regards to the amount of the raises this included the raise across the board that everybody's going to be getting they're going to get this in this case the dollar fifty raise versus the dollar raised in the clerks department and the additional on top of that correct the what i call the targeted raises uh included these requests specifically from the department head so i'll work those in to the targeted raises and then the general across the board race would be in addition to the adjustments and the salary that way it keeps everybody it keeps it comparative like we don't want to get the pay scale skewed we've got two people doing the same thing you know with the same basically the same experience they should be making the same thing should be if we realize we have a few situations like that where it was off so that's what we're trying to correct with the exact merit pay raises i did since it is personnel i do have a tar a list of all those targeted raises that's a very small part of what the total is with across the board so that's something from a personnel standpoint really don't want to talk about that out front so we'll talk about personnel 101 if you have any questions specifically about that i can answer that okay

[0:08:34] but yeah your question though this is an addition to the across the board that way we don't skew the pay scale did i answer your question yes we'll discuss the personal uh yeah i'll get with you with that thank you floor open for municipal court any other uh questions about that one other thing you all know that we did add a monday court so that's gone well thomas and his staff done a great job with our judges and attorneys so we've added the money core that's that's operating very well i have a question regarding the scanning project that says this project in 2018 will be paid for utility time how are we going to do that uh i don't know that we've made that decision yet but now this question you said that on the scanning project that you're going to do this year that you're going to pay for it through utility funds well software yeah the utility department is considering purchasing this awful error that we were considering purchasing so when we looked at the core supplies budget for 2017 we put an additional 20 000 in there to purchase it it looks like the utility department is going to use the same software that we're going to use so it paid more defense for the utility department to purchase it in the court department since since it'll be in the city you know several departments can use it in addition to utilities okay thank you thank you thomas any other questions for thomas okay we'll move on um believe it or not i think whitney is going to be short-winded today so we'll go ahead and bring wendy whitney out this might be the rarest we took out vehicles we asked for

[0:10:43] vehicles last year we've removed those our fleets up to date everything's in good shape made the cuts that we could per the mayor's request i think we made a significant cut the only thing is we had two building inspectors we took harold out of that one position put him up in code enforcement we're looking to replace him but we want to have a more qualified electrical uh inspector there got a lot of commercial going on and we feel like an electrical inspector is a pretty significant uh incentive for us uh you get a lot of hotels going in and without having some electrical background it's a little rough um that proposal is a 50 000 position and it will kind of be offset by what we're paying him already but otherwise than that um everything's the same there were 90 whitney did provide 90 000 in uh operational pay cuts so i appreciate that not a problem any questions for whitney go ahead just before you sit down just can you tell us about like we did last year about um and i spoke for andrea and uh thomas um priorities like three things that you see in the future that are big priorities for your department well i think the biggest thing right now is getting our um manpower in our building inspection section as everybody knows building is coming up a lot of development going on right now we're sitting with the chief building official a part-time field inspector because we're utilizing herald in three different areas right now and then we have our one full-time inspector so main priority is to get us fully staffed there and again our second priority and always one of our priorities is to get everybody cross-trained we have a lot of cross-training going on right now between code enforcement and the building inspection side and i think once that final house is out it's going to work really well from both standpoints um you know otherwise in that with with uh across the board pay increase uh my employees are happy our equipment's great um obviously if we can get everybody together in one area of city hall that

[0:12:46] would be our third priority just to help development flow better but otherwise in that we're good once we get everyone cross-trained will we need to hire more people no the idea we've got you know there's times when development's slow when it's cold when it's rainy development slows down in the summertime obviously code enforcement increases you know tall grass political seasons so what we hope to do is in the lulls in one department we'll be able to step over to the other department and help so you'll have essentially three on this one side you'll have five over here combined together that's more than we've ever had staffed there and i can tell you um when we lost a code enforcement officer we opted to not place another one there and as this replacement because honestly wards five and six don't have a lot of code enforcement issues so we've combined those awards and gone down to five officers as opposed to the six um so that helps maneuver some money between the building inspection side and code enforcement so thank you i got a question you guys you made a significant cut to city beautification are there any new projects is this just for maintaining what we have now or do you have any projects planned no the progress we're planning right now and the americans speak on this this is kind of our pet project but our entrance signs are the big thing for this year um that's really kind of his baby so i'll let him speak on that for my side i like to find what i call my pet projects around beautification the boulevards landscaping some areas um you know we're looking at some different scenarios one of the things i looked at when i was going back and forth to baseball in batesville as they had the american flags at the interchanges and i thought that was great um just things like that um but the main big project that's coming through will be the entrance signs and that's where we felt like we could reduce down from the 275 last year down to 100 in an effort to also get the across the board races you know if we see we run low we can always ask for more next year with open sorry is the condemnation is that going to be enough for the increase that we've been seeing condemnations have actually once we started assessing the properties versus liens it's amazing how people all

[0:14:49] of a sudden started taking it a little bit more seriously so the condemned property has gone down and we've just kind of watched our balance this year on average what we're using and i feel like this is a good safe number we can work with and to finish the answer the question on beautification that's a one year sacrifice we would expect to request more next year that was just that's a 902 fund which i manage the 902 accounts and that's a 902 account that we just simply said we have bigger parties this year you know the raises and infrastructure improvement is more important this year so that's that's basically my effort to to trim my my parts of the budget so um we will expect to raise that again next year because uh 100 when we take it to 100. we're at 100 we took our 175 of it yes 100 000 will not be enough to do some of the things that we want to do but we're just going to push some of those things off basically like whitney said our main thing is well last year we got the city entrance signs done and we bought the metro signs that we're in the process of installing now but the uh the brick entrance signs on interstate 55 those are the two biggest goals and we have some small landscaping projects we can do uh but eventually there's some other things we want to do we'd like to make the i-55 intersection i mean it interchanges more attractive we like to put wrought iron fencing up and down take the old nasty vines going through the chain link take all that down that will be uh fairly costly right there all of them y'all fencing on the ramps at all three interchanges but that that's costly so uh we've decided to bump that back again just to make sacrifices do we have easement for that um well we yeah we have and we've spoken to mdot basically they supply a cyclone fence and if we choose to go above and beyond that they'll give us the cost of the cyclone fence repair and we play we pay the difference so it's a pretty good scenario they'll let you do whatever you want as long as you pay for it [Music]

[0:16:57] that's true they're very cooperative yeah very and as you know you know at one time the uh the uh landscaping and the right-of-way cutting was done by mdot now with david grayson gracious enough to give us all three in the changes any other questions for whitney thank you okay ray humphrey will you come up and just ray should be fairly short too we talked about his issues the main things i want to tell you as it relates to utilities and not getting too far ahead of ray but our biggest projects there were we have a new well that's being dug now at starlanding road near the curve there we realized that our water capacity was getting lower than our standards so we do have the well that's being dug now in addition to that we're gonna we have a project where we're adding fire hydrants to the annexed areas that didn't have sufficient water lines to have the fire hardness that we need throughout the city that's a massive project about a four million dollar project so we've broken that down uh in certain projects per year i believe over a three or four year plan and we have already started that we start the first one is near hunter road on star landing road as well but those are the things that you know related to my bigger picture as far as public safety that relate to ray but ray take the floor please that's correct they are in down there working on hunter road south right now they're getting locates called in so we should have fire protection in that subdivision here real soon so that's going good but um really our budget this year from the utility department's pretty close to last year in amounts but there's really two goals that i had was to as we continue improving the water and sewer system at the same time try to keep the rates as well as possible for the citizens and secondly was

[0:18:59] getting our as the mayor presented getting our employee bar set a little higher not just with comparable positions in other departments but with other utility departments too so i feel like we've got the best utility workers and i'd like to pay on what the rest of the people get paid for that type of work so we've been low on that end and hopefully with y'all's permission we can fix that all that still remains in budget and we're able to balance the budget that way but outside of that though the goals i think the mayor probably already went over those was the consolidation of our billing collection office here at city hall we hopefully at the end of this week we'll have that done we'll be all moved in here at city hall starting monday we'll be ready to go shutting down pepper chase for taking payments is going to be a little inconvenience but we are adding another drop box um as soon as it comes in it's going to be out there by the parks office somewhere and we'll put that on the website and let people know they can drop their payments off there we pick those up every morning so i think it'll be a trade-off we're making a little bit more convenient for the people that normally would come by to make a payment they can make it out there where there's a lot of growth and number two was the fire extension projects that we're doing phase one this year and uh phase two next year but hunter road south area mainly and then the the well as the mayor mentioned so um that and the automatic meter reading that we're we've been working with for the last two or three years trying it out is working really good so we're getting to that point now to where we're gonna we're going to go ahead and implement with y'all's approval um a larger part of the system so we can get that going where we can get up with the technology that's currently out there so make it more efficient for our

[0:21:01] building and also for the meter reading so that's pretty much it if y'all have any questions are we looking to replace uh when you say the automatic meter reading are you talking about like for all the replacing and all the houses that's correct we've done quite a few of them but there's there's still a majority of the system when we do we that we've done it as as we've been putting new meters in that's what we've been putting in so the last probably three years when we set new meters and so forth has been that that style of meter so we're still outsourcing our meter eating correct that's correct where's that in the budget line how much we're spending for that and is that going down with the that will probably the first year once we get uh everything changed out you know we'll we'll have them that year and then we'll we'll drop them off pretty quick at that point it pretty much offsets the cost of that so you're in the budget anywhere i'm not seeing the budget going forward i'm just saying you can't see much of the earthquakes at all by the way oh yeah hey you gotta do that you yeah water metering that's right and the goal is to eliminate that all together though the ultimate goal it's going to be completely eliminated and make us more efficient it's no secret that there's always a degree of inaccuracy with meter reading so our staff our water staff spends an enormous amount of time you know discussing discrepancies with citizens about their uh meter reading so

[0:23:04] this obviously is designed to make us tremendously more efficient with our more accurate meter readers and to cut down some of the time that our personnel spend with telephone calls you know discussing that i thought we were going to go take i thought we were going are we not doing going into taking debt out to go to the media reading route chris is that right we're going to get that's yes and that 235 that we're paying to maker now would transfer to the debt payment right for the automatic meter we're doing the cash for the water tower and for the extensions okay but the the revenue bond will be used for the meter offset by the by that cost reduction that we're spending on meter reading now going down and then rolling that over to uh that's ray that that this uh these new meters should help us uh with our citizens to identify problems before our citizens i know want it it can do that so it is definitely a tool that that when we come out and meet with the customer when they have issues that we can explain it's right there it shows exactly where the water's going when what time it's going and everything so i know some of y'all we've actually done that for y'all just to show you how it works but uh you know meter reading for the last couple of years has been very good at the company that we use they've been consistent we've had very little complaints but if you go back to the year before that y'all remember it was pretty rough and even when we did it in-house you could go years where you you had good meter reading and then something happened and it just when it goes bad it goes bad fast and it's just creates havoc on the office and also you know the citizens confidence in us so this takes all that out of the question any other questions for ray and again i tell you but i'll tell you i want to tell you again uh um if you don't know it we have an outstanding

[0:25:07] crews in the utilities department they're extremely proactive i mean any issue that's there nine out of ten times there they've been on it before anybody ever calls uh to report that and uh they're on call you know any weekends uh whatever they do a tremendous job so i appreciate that thank you the effort that you and your department look forward thank you very much absolutely okay and next bradley wallace with a public works pledge as bradley is coming up again some of the things that bradley supervises our 902 accounts which are you know closely supervised by me as well uh just some of the things just real quickly that that are in bradley's department just to save us some time i talked about on july 6. i've realized over the last four years well i told everyone that i would give my assessment after the first four years on how we can make our operation better and the recent storm on may 28th really shed some light on just how at risk we are when we rely 100 on outside contractors and it's for that reason and the fact that i realized how what a bare bones crew we have in public works you know public works there is enormous amount of demands on public works that's our streets our our sanitation rubbish recycling all that comes through there you you know your streets of potholes um uh anything to do to do with right-of-ways you know manages the right-of-way contracts the bush hogging manicured right-of-ways all that falls under uh public works bradley also acts in a dual role he's our facilities director as well uh so there's some things that i've witnessed that can make us better and one of those is i just simply believe we can bring we've had a poor experience with some of our outside contractors i think we can bring some of the things back in house that's been my proposal to uh to buy bush hogging equipment and bring that back in-house hire six new people to do

[0:27:10] that uh that not only allows us to do a better job of managing our right-of-ways but also it adds uh the mdot right-of-ways i mean mdot only cuts the right-of-ways twice a year that's interstate 55. you know when you come into our city many people the only thing they see about south haven mississippi is what they see from i-55 and it's just it doesn't meet my standards it just simply does not meet my standards if i'm going to be mayor of this city interstate 55 is not going to look like that in south david so that's been one of my priorities is to add six new personnel and public works uh about with hogging equipment that would keep the interstate looking better and all our right-of-way is looking better also um we talked about in my plan about uh bringing some of the uh the drainage work back in house you know we pay outside parties to do a lot of repairs to our street drainage systems there's things that our staff can do if they have the equipment which we believe can trim our costs significantly so in my plan there's also a proposal to uh to purchase the equipment to do some of the drainage repairs as well and then last thing is as it relates to facilities uh bradley knows that anything that happens to any of our buildings you know we we don't have our own maintenance staff we're calling someone so i mean you have something as simple as a you know a toilet malfunction or whatever we're calling a plumber you know these are things that you know lighting hvac uh plumbing these are things that we believe if we uh spend some money on our own maintenance technician that we can save a tremendous amount of money off of that um what was it last year one point two for facilities maintenance uh yes sure okay and in my proposal i recommended cutting that by bringing that down because we believe with our own maintenance uh personnel we can save a lot of money there but those were the things in bradley that bradley oversees uh they were part of my plan so i'll turn the floor over to you brad i think i'm done thank you very much okay any questions from brett now thank you mayor i appreciate the uh comments and uh just real quickly um

[0:29:15] just to get through the the quicker ones first animal control is also part of my responsibilities you know they do a great job i don't really have anything we're not the only budget issue animal control that we've requested is salary related for the staff there as shown in the paper and the information you have for me facilities also pretty quick as the mayor said the main thing is the maintenance technician that could really help us get a lot of things no we don't have a good vehicle for doing some really basic repairs and maintenance we feel that good if we get the right person that would really help with that otherwise there's just some physician projects listed i would recommend that we consider uh including in that budget for the good next year's maintenance related things at some of our facilities sanitation the main thing there as we get into public works is we look forward next year to consolidating contracts if possible or at least revisiting the contracts we have for garbage and rubbish right now and positive recycling but certainly consolidation is something we're interested in to see how that works see if it would benefit the city those are um we feel like it's going to make a difference give us you give us certainly give us an opportunity to improve some things that we've been concerned about even as he mentioned the storm things like that have shown that we need to possibly make some changes there we need we need the opportunity to do that we'll see that next year as those kind of tracks come all kind of come to you at the same time main thing is the streets area are asking for salary increases in public works as well with existing staff that we feel are the ones that are again in information you have that are um we feel are appropriate for the people we have a good job we want to keep them motivated and

[0:31:17] encouraged to keep working with us on all these things as we grow we do feel our main goal is to continue to try to do as much in-house as we can when we feel we can do it as good or better then we're getting it done now that includes the things that mayor said main things the right-of-way maintenance contract would be the main thing we would ask to have the opportunity to take back and uh hopefully do as well or better the improvements infrastructure improvements we won't be doing all of that there's no way we can do that but we can certainly do a portion of it and save some money there from what we do in street maintenance and drainage maintenance those budgets now 92 codes as you mentioned uh also we'd like to continue to work on our traffic signal capabilities we've made some progress to that in recent years we'll keep working on that and then our shop in the city shop we would like to consider a request that we have an additional mechanic added we would like to go back to particularly help in the police department so i can achieve purple about that we have in the past had they had a mechanic out there and we'd get had to have a spot in the shop we're suggesting that we could benefit from having additional mechanic but we would dedicate a person to the police department they would always be priority if they needed it they weren't needing it then they could use it we could use them for other things in our shop but the main focus for that position would be to help the police department with regular maintenance and repair as appropriate for them to keep them running on things that they can be worked out so those are the main conditions to what we would like to do in our services and continue to grow and move forward we've been trying to do in recent years if we set go the main priorities as you look through here i mean obviously there's a lot of money requested for all the things like the mayor said we do feel like we've got about about a half million dollars

[0:33:21] that we could save from eliminating the right-of-way contract from reducing some of the work we do outside from drainage and street maintenance and adding this tip maintenance technician and all of it across all those budgets we feel like there's a significant money to be saved there it is going to require significant money to be spent to get us there i feel like within a two year period or so we'll be probably saving enough to pay for much equipment and things that we're doing personnel related costs additional personnel and increasing what we have now for the person that we have in house now that may take a little

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=64JgOuxzZvI