Algood City Council got its first look at the 25-26 budget Tuesday night and the numbers look good.
Council approved the first reading. City Administrator Keith Morrison said the property tax rate will remain the same, at .3623 per $100 in the proposed budget.
“We’ve got a lot of capital projects in there and a lot of things that we have worked on this year,” Morrison said. “We have worked on employee salaries to be competitive with other cities and other locations and we are trying to work on the new park, public works projects, and water sewer projects. There’s lots of things in there that we are excited for that we need and we are glad the council agrees with.”
Morrison said the reason the city is able to budget for more capital projects is due to a healthy general fund balance.
“Being able to fund those (Projects) with a strong healthy fund balance keeps the citizens from having to pay for that cost,” Morrison said. “That’s good news for us and big news for the citizens.”
Morrison said the budget will have one more reading in May and then the budget will be official after a public hearing. Morrison said he does not expect many changes from now until July.
“From the conversations we’ve had I don’t think so,” Morrison said. “We’ve going over this budget since December and January in pretty big detail and went over a couple of months ago in-depth and went through it step by step and broke it down so as much time as we have put into it I’m confident we are ready to move forward.”
In other business, the council approved the second and final reading to adopt new procedures for the appointment of department directors. Morrison said the new procedures will revert to how the policy was written before and will give the city administrator the authority to appoint apartment directors instead of the city council.
The board approved the second and final reading amending the public records policy.
The board approved the second and final reading of an ordinance to rezone property at Hope Church located on West Main Street. Morrison said the property has multiple different and that the ordinance is to designate all the zones on the property to a central business district zone.
The board approved an amendment that will allow the Tennessee Central Rail Authority to add a ninth member to the authority’s board. Morrison said the ninth member will be from the Friends of the Tennessee Central Trail.
The board approved a resolution to update the city’s Title VI policy. Morrison said Title VI is a federal discrimination policy. Morrison said the change is removing wording that references to an executive order that is no longer in effect.
