The Fiscal Year 2020 budget that was recently passed by the Petal Board of Aldermen will stand and go into effect Oct. 1, as the board voted during a special-called meeting Monday to override Mayor Hal Marx’s previous veto of the budget.
The vote to override the veto – which Marx delivered on Sept. 17 – was 5-2, with Ward 4 Alderman Brad Amacker and Ward 5 Alderman Tony Ducker voting against the override. Aldermen also voted to override Marx’s recent veto of the recently-passed 25-cent-increase to monthly water bills, with Ducker providing the sole vote against the increase.
“I think what we have heard throughout this whole process from the community is that they support us,” said Ward 3 Alderman Clint Moore, who is in favor of the budget. “Over the past few years, we have cut, cut, cut, where we needed to cut, and we like to throw around the term that we ‘run the city like a business.’
“A business cannot continually cut, cut, cut to solve problems; at some point the revenue has to be increased. So what we have to do is look and see, as the City of Petal, what is important to us, and it resounds very clearly that public safety, infrastructure and a high quality of life for the community are our strong points.”
Aldermen voted 5-2 on Sept. 10 to approve the budget – which features approximately $8.607 in both revenue and expenditures – but Marx said immediately afterward that he would veto the measure. He did so one week later, saying the budget set the city up for failure in that it exceeded the $8 million budget suggested by financial consultant Doug King and city clerk Melissa Martin.
The mayor said the budget also relies on one-time monies that will not be available next year, including $300,000 in revenue from a bond fund and a $100,000 sports donation from Forrest County District 3 Supervisor Burkett Ross.
Amacker agreed with the mayor on that point, saying his issue was that the city has pushed to the financial edge of its projected revenue.
“That doesn’t give us any rainy day funds, that doesn’t give us any money in the bank,” he said. “If, for some reason, we hit a recessive slump and sales tax revenue slips, we miss the projection.
“Then in six or eight months, here we are having to amend the budget and make cuts that we didn’t make today. (This) is not about any particular issue, other than I think that this budget is too large, and we need to find some places to cut and make the budget more responsible.”
Although the current budget keeps the recreation and athletic departments intact and maintains the city’s partnership with the Petal Sports Association – in which the Petal Athletics Office was created and placed under the jurisdiction of the Parks and Recreation Department – a few jobs in recreational maintenance have been reduced. In addition, the athletic department and the recreation department are now under a single director.
Recently, Petal officials decided they could no longer maintain the ball fields near the Petal Family Branch YMCA within the city’s budget. Marx said although the PSA hosts games at those parks, for the past couple years the city has shouldered the financial responsibility, which has become no longer feasible.
“I’m not voting against any project, I’m not voting against any department – I want it to be clear that I don’t have a vendetta,” Amacker said. “I know that this has become a very divisive topic, especially on Facebook, with people saying we’re trying to kill youth sports.
“That has been the rally cry to support the expansion of the budget, but that’s not my issue. When Doug came to us and said it looks like we’re going to have a balance of $7 or $8 million, my opinion was, let’s budget $7 or $8 million. But instead of trying to stay inside that, now we’ve gotten a budget where we shoehorn around what we want to spend.”
The budget allocates approximately $2.295 million to the police department, $2.53 million to the fire department and $1.362 million to streets and highways. Property taxes will not increase under the budget, as city millage remains the same at 43.16 mills, in addition to 55 mills levied for school purposes.
Moore said over the next few months, city officials will look at ways to continue to the city’s services that the residents have become accustomed to, without having to cut expenses every year.
“So we’re going to look for a special sales tax, or some sort of revenue generation, in which the people can vote to support everything that they hold dear, and that they’ve told us resoundingly over this seven-week process that they do not want to do without,” he said.
The 25-cent increase on monthly water rates also will go into effect next month. The new measure brings the minimum residential water rate from $13 to $13.25 for up to 2,000 gallons per month.
“The water budget is a budget that only relies on revenues generated by services,” Moore said in an earlier story. “It doesn’t have any funds from any other locations coming into it – from taxes or anything like that – so we had to make sure that our revenues are keeping up with our expenses.
“That’s a department where you could see major, major expenses from an emergency, so we want to make sure we’re planning for the future to have enough money in that account.”
