Radcliff budget presented to city council

Radcliff Mayor J.J. Duvall said it’s time to tackle maintenance and beautification projects that have been put off for years.

City Council members heard the proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year of July 1 through June 30, 2012, on Thursday during a first reading. The proposed budget is based on more than $10.6 million available in the city’s general fund and more than $1.1 million in a storm water utility fund.

The proposal includes updating old signs and blacktopping some roads.

One of the roads to be blacktopped is South Wilson Road, which Duvall said hasn’t been paved in 24 years.

The budget also calls for widening and resurfacing Shelton Road from South Wilson Road to Meadow Lake Drive.

Repairing roads is important because they present safety concerns, and beautification is important to make sure that the city presents itself well, Duvall said.

“It’s also important that we are maintaining and doing what cities are meant to do,” he said.

Duvall said another victory in the budget is that it includes a 1.5 percent cost of living increase for city employees.

Early in the year, the mayor and council members have the option of accepting a cost of living increase, said Chief Financial Officer Chance Fox.

Officials often have taken the increase in. They likely assumed they would be able to give city employees similar raises when compiling the coming years’ budgets, Fox said.

Later, officials sometimes found out there wasn’t enough money in the budget to give the increase to all employees.

Duvall said he and council members were determined that no such thing would happen this year. They won’t accept the increase until they know that it is available for all city employees, he said.

Duvall said all of the changes and projects he thinks are important were put into the budget while creating no new debt, using no reserve money and calling for no change in the tax rate.

Much of that was accomplished by cutting unnecessary expenses, including more than $92,000 from the administrative budget.

Duvall said council members and department heads all had a lot of input in the budget, and he is confident that it will be passed intact.

“I’m very confident in the budget that I presented,” he said. “The budget’s an aggressive budget.”

Council members heard good news about the budget for the current fiscal year when they learned insurance premium taxes brought in $153,000 more than expected.

They heard a first reading of an amendment to the budget that would account for slight changes accounting for the increase and other smaller unforeseen windfalls from taxes and fees totaling $302,200 more than expected.

Fox said it’s impossible to tell the specific cause of the unexpected increase.

He said he hopes it’s the result of a law designed to make the collection of that tax, which is conducted by insurance companies, more accurate.

Fox said the windfall is one reason the upcoming budget won’t need to draw from reserve money.

The city must pass a budget by June 30.

Amber Coulter can be reached at (270) 505-1746 or acoulter@thenewsenterprise.com.