Eagleville city councilmen adopted a budget for 2007-2008 on June 25 on the third and final reading after cutting the total compensation proposed for the city recorder to $37,510, which is a decrease of $9,060 from the mayor’s initial budget proposal.

The $37,510 includes a 3 percent raise in the city recorder’s salary plus $1,200 in a type of insurance benefit which the recorder has to match.

Also, after two budget workshops and discussions at regular meetings, councilmen left the police salary at $15,000 a year, which is a $33,558 cut from last year’s budgeted salary and health insurance benefits. They also added a new part-time park director position at a salary of $6,400 a year.

The new budget totals about $1 million but that amount includes projected proceeds from a $500,000 Home grant, $160,000 from a federal greenway grant, and $45,000 from a parks and recreation grant. The uses of these funds are restricted according to the specific grant provisions.

The spending plan calls for a 5 cent tax increase which will bring the tax rate up to 92 cents per $100 of assessed value. The 5 cent increase is expected to bring in an additional $4,350.

The budget, which went into effect July 1, shows a projected net income of $7,639 over expenses at the end of the 2008 fiscal year.

Estimated income to support the budget includes $234,450 in local taxes with about $93,000 coming from property taxes, $21,000 from business taxes and $120,000 from sales taxes.

The projected intergovernmental revenue, which includes income from federal, state and county sources, amounts to $787,630. Most of that amount is for the grants listed above.

The council voted 4 to 2 for the proposed budget with Vice Mayor Ronnie Hill and Councilman M.A. Smitty voting against it. Councilmen David Rigsby, Harold Vincion, Terry Zumbro and Greg Buchanan voted for the budget proposal.

On the first two readings Buchanan had voted against the budget as proposed at that time. This made a 3-3 vote and Mayor Nolan Barham voted for the budget twice to break the tie.

Buchanan said he voted for the budget on third reading because the amount that had been going (to the city recorder) for the (fire) administration pay "was corrected." Also a proposed $5,760 insurance benefit package for the city recorder was reduced to the $1,200 insurance benefit.

"I don’t think we could afford the insurance but (the proposed budget) gave us a little buffer to run on," Buchanan said.

"I hated to raise taxes on citizens, but it looked like a pretty fair budget," he said. "They are never going to be exactly right, but a lot was changed from the other night to today."

Smitty had pushed for more money for police throughout the budget process and had voted against the budget on the two previous readings. Buchanan also supported allocating more money for police.

Hill also voted against the budget on the two prior readings. He had said earlier that he would vote against any budget that included more than $36,000 in city recorder pay, noting the city could not afford more pay. He also wanted to see a larger surplus than was projected in the budget.

Mayor Nolan Barham initially proposed a 3 percent raise for the city recorder duties making the salary $36,310 plus a $5,760 benefits package and raising the wages from $3,108 to $4,500 for administrative duties that the city recorder does for the fire department.

The fire administration work includes filing a report about each fire department call through the Tennessee Fire Incident Reporting System (TFIRS). That agency forwards the report to the National FIRS (NFIRS) that is managed by a unit of the federal homeland security department.

The administration work also includes writing checks for the fire chief salary and for fire call payments and other paperwork, including paying for supplies and keeping up with a $25,000 grant from the county.

The grant, which is awarded to all the volunteer fire departments in the county, is the total source of revenue for the Eagleville Fire Department outside of donations and fundraisers. Many or most of the volunteer fire departments do not use any of the county grant to pay salaries, according to the county finance department.

According to the budget figures given out at the June 25 council meeting, the city of Eagleville paid $10,460 or 41.8 percent of the $25,000 county grant in salaries the last fiscal year. Out of that amount the fire chief was paid $4,900 and the city recorder, $5,560. Also, the department paid $2,520 for fire calls.

For the new budget, however, the council dropped the proposed $4,500 fire administration pay to zero after councilmen learned that City Recorder Michelle Bennett had not filed an incident report through TFIRS since April 11, 2005.

It is unclear why the reports, which are required for the city to be eligible for federal fire grants, were not filed.

"I think we ran into a problem when we thought all the reports were being filed that were supposed to have been filed and they weren’t (because) the city recorder thought the chief was doing it and the chief thought the city recorder was doing it," Councilman Harold Vincion, who is chairman of the fire board, said. "Nobody ended up doing it, and we don’t want that to happen anymore."

Vincion recommended that the new Fire Chief David Martin handle the reports rather than having the city recorder do it. He recommended that $800 be added to Martin’s $5,150 proposed annual salary to make it $6,000 a year. The $6,000 salary, which was the amount budgeted for former fire Chief Joe Jackson, was adopted.

Martin had initially suggested using a $2,221 projected balance in the fire grant, which is set at $30,000 this year, to hire a fire administrator of his "choosing." He said he would have to hire an outside auditor for the fire department if he did the administrative work himself.

Councilmen pointed out, however, that the city already has an annual outside audit and that covers the fire department.

The council opted to put the remainder of the balance in fire department supplies instead of in salaries.

"I’d rather turn the rest of the money into the turnout gear if it is in that bad of shape," Vincion said. "We don’t want anybody going into a fire without that."

Martin placed the fault of the reports not being filed since April 11, 2005, on the former fire chief, who could not be reached for comment by the Eagleville Times.

"It all falls back on the chief," Martin said. "It was the chief’s responsibility to check and make sure they were done. It all falls back on the mayor if the city doesn’t work right, and it falls back on the chief if the fire department doesn’t work right."

Hill said the city was paying someone else to file the reports.

Martin indicated he had planned on doing the reports himself anyway.

"It will take five seconds to do the checking and 10 minutes per sheet of paper to do the filing," he said. "The TFIRS reports will not go through the city at all anymore."

Bennett will continue to prepare the paychecks and do other bookkeeping work for the fire department within her city recorder salary.

Also in conjunction with the city recorder’s pay, councilmen wanted assurance from the mayor, who supervises the recorder, that the $36,310 budgeted for her pay would be for salary and there would be no overtime.

Smitty suggested putting the salary item on the agenda for the next meeting but Barham suggested just writing "salaried position" on the budget document next to the city recorder line item.

According to information provided at the June 25 meeting, Bennett was paid $9,160 over the amount budgeted for the city recorder duties last fiscal year and $2,453 more than budgeted for the fire administration duties for a total overage of $11,613. It appears the overage was for overtime pay.

On the police budget, Barham suggested applying for a grant through the COPS program, which he said is expected to pass Congress this term.

The $15,000 salary in the budget will provide for occasional part-time police coverage.

Barham said he is talking with Rutherford County Sheriff Truman Jones’ office about proposals to provide further police coverage for Eagleville.

"He is meeting with some of his people and they are going to call me with two or three written proposals," Barham said.

"I want to say for the third and final reading, we are making a mistake by not putting more money in the police budget to hire more policemen," Smitty said. "But there is no need to beat a dead horse, so I’m not going to say anymore about it."

Buchanan expressed the same sentiment and questioned how long it will take to get such a grant.

Published July 1, 2007

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