Baxter officials proposing a new budget that includes a $1 hourly raise for all full-time employees while maintaining the current tax rate for residents.
Mayor Danny Holmes said the city prioritized the pay increase to help retain staff amidst rising cost of living. Holmes said aldermen would have to cut several departmental requests to balance the figures.
“One of the best things that I saw was being able to put that dollar back in the budget for each and every employee,” Holmes said. “Our employees are our greatest asset for the city of Baxter, there’s no doubt about that, and we don’t want to lose any one of them to somewhere else.”
Holmes said the city removed funding for additional personnel, including a requested police officer position and a new firefighter. Holmes said the budget also required cutting requests for portable radios intended for part-time and volunteer fire department members.
“We always feel like that to keep your employees you have to to set a pay that’s kind of, you know, to make them happy,” Holmes said. “Everything is so much higher now… the cost of living, groceries, rent, everything is going up.”
Holmes said the budget still includes several capital purchases, such as a second garbage truck to ensure service continuity and a new sludge truck for the sewer system. Holmes said the city also maintained funding for a salt barn to keep winter road supplies dry, along with equipment and uniforms for the street, police and fire departments.
As of now, the budget does not include a tax increase.
“I just hope that the citizens in Baxter are very happy that there’ll be no more property increases this year,” Holmes said. “We have a lot of citizens here that are living off Social Security, we have a lot of elderly citizens in our city and we love them to death. They are part of Baxter and will always be part of Baxter but we don’t want to make it where they cannot survive, where they cannot do without groceries or something to pay their taxes.”
Holmes said he expects the council to hold a special called meeting within the next few weeks to pass the second reading and have the budget in place by July 1.
“This council always tries to do each and every year is keep the tax rate low and that’s what we’re going to do,” Holmes said. “But, you know, we’ll see what happens. Let’s put it that way”
Holmes said the budget is not set in stone until the final vote, but he does not anticipate the council making further changes.
