Will impact 2019 city budget
By Bert Lehman
With the 2019 budget looming, the Clintonville City Council approved a new salary schedule for city employees.
The salary schedule was discussed in closed session at the Oct. 9 Clintonville City Council meeting.
Afterward, the council approved implementing the salary schedule by unanimous vote.
No further details about the salary schedule or implementation were released as of press time.
The Clintonville Personnel Committee had discussed a compensation study at several of its meetings, and the finance committee discussed it on Oct. 8. All discussions took place in closed session.
During the Oct. 8 finance committee meeting, City Administrator Sharon Eveland briefly mentioned the compensation study while updating the committee on the 2019 city budget.
She said the city is still waiting for Consumer Price Index numbers from the state before it can finish its preliminary 2019 city budget.
She also told the committee that because the city of Clintonville recently closed out its remaining tax incremental districts,the city is allowed to increase its levy by 50 percent of the levy that the city was receiving from the TIDs. The net new construction in the city was just under 1 percent at 0.85 percent.
Although the city doesn’t have all the information required to finish a preliminary 2019 budget, Eveland said she is anticipating the operating budget for the city will increase by $100,000 next year, which falls within the city’s levy limit. It is also under the city’s estimated expenditure restraint increase limit.
“With this being such a unique situation with the city with the TIDs closing and that value dispersing, it is going to be my recommendation that we make full use of our expenditure restraint increase this year,” Eveland said. “We didn’t do that last year, in an attempt to keep the tax rate down.”
Eveland said she did not have a projected tax rate yet.
The debt payment that is supported by property taxes will increase in 2019, Eveland added.
“But we are looking to offset that as much as we can with our debt reserve,” she said.
“The biggest changes in there are because of salary changes with the compensation study,” Eveland said.
No further details were given about the salary changes.
She said she added funds to the 2019 budget of different departments for training.
“I think that some of them have not had the opportunity to do as much [training] as I think they should, so we’re looking at increases for training,” Eveland said.
Eveland added that the increase the city made to the 2018 budget for the Streets Department, to be used for street maintenance and repair, is scheduled to remain in the 2019 budget.
The city projects it will break even on this year’s 2018 budget, Eveland said.