Council approves $60.1 million budget, Gadsden's first under Mayor Craig Ford
The City of Gadsden’s first budget from Mayor Craig Ford’s administration is finally in place, after approval on Tuesday by the City Council.
Council members voted unanimously for a substitute version of “Gadsden F.I.R.S.T.” (“Focusing on Internal Resources Services and Training”), which contained a few revisions presented by Ford in the pre-council work session that wound up having a $75,000 positive effect on the more than $60.1 million document.
The mayor took “full responsibility” for the omissions, the bulk of which involved Gadsden State Community College. The original budget didn’t include the city’s $50,000 commitment to the Advanced Manufacturing and Skills Training Center under construction on the college’s East Broad Street campus.
It also didn’t include a $100,000 commitment to what Ford called “showpiece” men’s baseball and women’s softball fields at the college.
“They asked us to participate in that and we thought that was a good deal for us,” the mayor said. “We’ll have full use of it also.”
The city already is involved in massive collaboration with GSCC on the Gadsden Sports Complex on property behind the Wallace Drive Campus, with an additional $5 million commitment to that in the new budget.
“I love the fact how you’re working with Gadsden State,” council President Kent Back told Ford during the work session. “It’s vitally important to our city and more important to our citizens.”
The other expenditure is the hiring of a staff attorney to assist City Attorney Lee Roberts and paralegal Erin Patterson. Ford said that will save the city money “in not contracting out so much attorney work.”
Some part-time positions were eliminated from the budget to account for the additions, plus Finance Director Brandon Phillips told the council that there’d been a slight underestimation of projected occupational tax receipts for Fiscal Year 2024, accounting for the positive effect.
The budget, which takes effect Oct. 1, was passed in the normal time frame (the week after its first presentation and a hearing at a council meeting) after an attempt to have it immediately considered last week was withdrawn after discussion over whether council member Larry Avery’s abstention in that vote denied the unanimous consent required for consideration.
There were concerns about whether the more than $2 million in pay raises for city employees — the highlight of the budget — would be delayed in appearing in their paychecks, although they’d be paid retroactively for what they’re due since Oct. 1.
Avery at the time said he wasn’t opposing the budget, he just had some “unreadiness” and unanswered questions about it, and he voted for it on Tuesday.
The budget reflects a 6% increase over the city’s Fiscal Year 2023 budget of $56.64 million. Along with increasing salaries by an average of $1.54 per hour for full-time employees and 57 cents per hour for part-timers, it reorganizes and simplifies the pay ranges and scales for employees, and provides money for training and leadership classes for employees and managers.
It also adds another full-time Animal Control officer, six part-time traffic enforcement officers, four full-time tree removal/demolition crew positions, and a food and beverage manager at Twin Bridges Golf Course.
The budget consolidates part-time transit driver positions into full-time positions; provides salary increases for administrative office assistants; restructures operations in the Public Works and Parks and Recreation Departments; features both equipment purchases and a plan for rotating city equipment and vehicles out of service; and reduces the city’s contributions to outside, non-governmental entities like 501(c)3 operations by a fourth.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Council approves $60.1M budget, Gadsden's first under Mayor Craig Ford
