Ferry budget takes shape
By MIKE HUGHES, Times Leader Staff WriterMARTINS FERRY - After another lengthy finance committee meeting, it appears a final budget may be ready for a vote next Thursday when members of the Martins Ferry City Council convene for their regularly scheduled meeting.
The main sticking point Thursday was how to come up with a projected deficit of $75,000 that was going to effect the street department.
In prior years, a portion of the general fund was transferred to the street department to help cover costs. Committee and council members worked to come up with a solution without having to dip into the general fund.
The biggest line-item expense in the general fund that could be cut was the city's four dispatcher positions, a move the group collectively has stated it doesn't want to make.
With recommendations from Safety/Service Director John Davies, a few changes were made to the budget.
- The line item for materials and supplies for street was trimmed from $40,000 to $30,000.
- A truck used by the street department will be transferred to the sewer department, saving $5,600.
- The money to pay the street sweeper position was covered by both the street and sewer department in varying percentages. Those percentages will be changed to reflect a greater responsibility from the sewer department for a savings of roughly $25,000.
But the big savings will come from the street department's wages line-item. That amount will be trimmed from $200,000 to $135,000.
This was also proposed by Davies, but the safety/service director has a plan to keep the street employees working while slashing $65,000 from the department's budget.
Davies said can temporarily assign street employees to perform duties for both the water and sewer departments, keeping the workers employed.
Their benefits will still have to come from street's budget, but their wages can be paid for out of other funds.
''Council sets the budget amount and I will do my best to make sure we stay inside that amount,'' Davies said. ''We won't go over it. I can move people around and keep the guys working.
''There is plenty of work to be done in both the sewer and water departments and we can move guys over to get that taken care of."
This needed to be done because an earlier plan of using permanent improvement money to assist in the budgetary shortfall was deemed illegal, at least in the manner in which it was proposed.
Permanent improvement funds can only be used to fund projects that will last for five years or longer. Projects like street paving, water improvement plans, fall under that umbrella.
The original plan was to borrow improvement money to supplement the paving money for the street department in effort to free up money for wages. The problem came in that doing so would not help the street department's overall financial picture.
One way improvement money could be used is that Davies mentioned he could drop the percentage of money in the capital water projects line item from 10 to 3 percent, transfer that money to the general fund and then borrow improvement money if need be.
Davies did stress that there are two pieces to fixing the budget puzzle and the second, he recommended, would be for council to adopt a cost allocation strategy.
Cost allocation frees up money from other funds and transfers it into the general fund. Auditor Rita Randall explained that according to a cost allocation study that was conducted, $59,00 from the water department, $17,000 from sewer, $27,000 from sanitation and further money from parking meters would be freed up with cost allocation.
That method would allow council to spend money where it was needed.
''Right now, there could be $1 million in the sewer department and if we were broke in street, we couldn't transfer any money out of there to help out,'' Davies said. ''Cost allocation will give you more control over the money and give you more time to get things fixed.''
The budget is due to the county no later than March 31.
Council is hoping that a potential sale of the former high school property, along with both lines being restarted at Severstal, could go a long way to helping the financial issues.
The bidding period on the former high school property ends next week.
Hughes may be reached at mhughes@timesleaderonline.com
