The Cookeville City Council will begin its budget work with a two-day session Wednesday and Thursday.
City Manager James Mills said the council will spend the two days looking over 17 different funds as well as the Cookeville Regional budget. Mills said the meetings allow council members to understand more specifics about the departments.
“The other important part of this is to gain the council’s input on what do they see or think is important or what’s important to them for the coming year,” Mills said. “What different projects do they want to try to complete, and how do we fund for those different projects.”
Mills said the goal is to have a budget ready for approval after the two meetings. Mills said employee wages, capital projects, and infrastructure improvements will be some of the top discussions that will be held during the meetings.
“All of this over the last several years, we have been dealing with increased costs and economic uncertainty, and how do you plan for that and how do you budget for that?” Mills said. “So those are the three driving factors for the budget for this year, and like I said, it has been that way for the past couple of years.”
Mill said the city is doing really well on revenue, as the sales tax numbers met the city’s projections from last year. Mills said the city has done really well on interest rates on deposits, however, Mills said that is a fleeting source of revenue.
“We talked about economic uncertainty as interest rates drop down in terms of our investments and our savings, that hurts us, but then in terms of borrowing funds, it helps us,” Mills said. “Again, there is a lot that goes into developing a budget for a city the size of the city of Cookeville.”
