For more than three hours Monday evening, the Bridgeport City Council poured through 51 pages of what is the proposed 2017-18 fiscal year budget for the city. For the most part, the budget document didn’t draw harsh comments and only appeared to have, for the most part, some fine tuning.
Considering it’s a $14.4 million budget being considered, City Manager Kim Haws believes the process went fairly smooth.
“I don’t think there were a lot of surprises in there, which helps the process,” said Haws. “There haven’t been any major decreases in revenues or major increases, which means we haven’t had to deal with a lot of fluctuation. The expenditure level has been fairly level and that’s made the process, in comparison to some years, fairly easy.”
The easy process didn’t mean that the budget wasn’t heavily scrutinized. Bridgeport Mayor Robert “Bob” Greer led the session and went through every page of the budget. Council members had the chance to ask questions on every single line item and every member of Council took the opportunity – at least once and sometimes several times – to inquire about those line items.
Bridgeport Finance Director Monica Musgrave, Haws and Assistant City Manager Jimmy Smith answered the bulk of the questions that were asked by members of the city’s governing body. Musgrave also told Council that last week she received good financial news to assist the city’s budget.
Although the budget was relatively flat, a few items did see six-figure decreases to help present the initial balanced budget presented and reviewed last night. Musgrave said for the past several years the city had allocated additional road paving and repair funds over and above – roughly $150,000 annually – what the voter-approved levy called for. Storm drainage funds was also cut more than in half from previous years to $132,589.
The good news was that Friday Musgrave received news from Harrison County officials that they would receive an additional $196,157 in property tax dollars due to an increase in property values. Council quickly put the bulk of those funds toward the paving. In fact, $150,000 was put back into the fund.
“We’ve kept up with the paving schedule we’ve established and it’s the one thing residents want to see and are quick to let you know if there’s a problem,” said Council member Dustin Vincent. Vincent also suggested that storm drainage issues could be addressed if they arise during the fiscal year and funding could be approved at Council’s discretion.
Musgrave will take the recommendations made by Council, including allocating the additional funds she received news of Friday, and present another revised budget. It is likely the budget document will again be discussed this coming Monday – March 13 – at the Bridgeport City Council’s regularly scheduled meeting.
Editor's Note: Top photo shows City Manager Kim Haws, while Finance Director Monica Musgrave is shown below at Monday's special Council meeting and work session.
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