Iola City Council was in full penny-pinching mode Monday, eliminating a number of line items necessary to close a projected $420,000 gap in the citys general fund.
Council members ultimately approved, 6-2, Iolas 2020 spending plan with a few caveats. If budget numbers come in better than expected and if a looming hike in health insurance premiums comes in below projections some of the cuts may be rescinded, such as an elimination of pay raises based on merit or longevity. Council members Ron Ballard and Gene Myrick were opposed.
Approval came Monday, following an occasionally heated discussion on a number of topics, ranging from cell phone stipends and credit card fees to a larger philosophical debate on what future budgets will look like.
COUNCIL members approved a list of proposed budget rescissions prescribed by City Administrator Sid Fleming, including skipping purchase of special rock utilized for chip-seal resurfacing of Iolas streets on an annual basis. Instead of buying the rock, crews will recycle used rock swept up by street sweepers after previous chip-seal projects, and then kept in a stockpile.
By washing off the old rock instead of buying additional materials, the maneuver will save about $80,000, Fleming noted. (The practice has been done in recent years, and has saved the city about $120,000, Mayor Jon Wells noted.)
The city also will skip a $36,500 transfer from the general fund into an employee benefit fund, to help cover potential retirement bonuses, Fleming said. Another $30,000 could be saved, he said, by passing along credit card service fees to customers. Up to now, the city has borne those costs.
The firm cuts, Fleming said, total $172,500.
He spelled out another $253,000 worth of cuts that would be enacted if necessary, but will be skipped if there are enough dollars in the general fund by years end. Those include transfers totaling $188,000 to equipment reserves for the Street and Alley and Parks departments; postponing purchase of a $41,000 patrol car for the Iola Police Department; $15,000 dedicated to demolishing condemned housing and skipping purchase of $8,000 worth of bunker gear and a ventilator for the Fire Department.
All told, those combined cuts would total $426,000.
COUNCIL members went one step further, arguing for a one-year freeze on merit increases and longevity bonuses, which amounts to about $57,000 in savings. City employees still will receive a cost-of-living hike, projected at 2.5 percent.
That maneuver may change as well, once the city learns by October how much more the city must pay for health insurance premiums. Fleming announced earlier this month that the increase could be as much as 30 percent, with the city limited in how much those costs can be passed on to employees.
Council members debated briefly whether to continue offering longevity bonuses to long-time employees, even without some receiving merit increases.
Eventually, they agreed that whats applicable for short-timers should be applied to the veteran employees as well in keeping both out of the budget, for now.
In a separate matter, the Council agreed with Flemings desire to eschew a 5 percent across-the-board reduction in general fund spending for each city department, which would have saved another $50,000 or so.
