Remarks by Stan Batemon
232 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 3 of 10
I have. It's roughly what we said. Well, that's about a $3 million problem.
You still have 25% estimated fund balance in unreserved funds. yes you will but you will not sustain that if you keep going that's the same story last year we won't sustain it i don't i'm not even looking to sustain it i'm looking to know where it is for sure the day we need it uh we're basing our figures on really good uh future estimates by you And I turn around and base mine on a lot more liberal approach, to use a terrible term in a Republican community. I look at our growth a little more positive than you do, because you have to be careful. I'm saying we won't know what it is until the…
Well, at that point in nine, we're going to pass the budget without the raise. We pass the budget without the raise, and we table it until January. We still haven't spent any of it. But we'll know exactly what the figures are then. That's my point.
My commitment to the employers was to, I support the raise. As long as it's 3.7%, and I think the money's there. And the money's there to me. I think the money is there.
I'm asking you to broaden your thoughts on that 6.6.
Mr. Chairman, let me point out the 6.7 million are not savings. 6.7 million is part of the total fund balance we're estimating we have in the bank. And 6.7 million plus at the end of your estimate, we're going to be down to one point something. So 6.7 plus the one point something is more like seven or eight. Pretty soon we're dipping into the seven we say we've got a problem on. We haven't got a $7 million problem, in my opinion. We don't have one. That's your opinion, though. Yeah. These numbers don't lie, right here. And neither does the chairman, who's done 20 budgets. I know. And…
The raise comes every year, and the employees work every year.
I'm only here six more weeks, and I would not be in favor of laying off an employee under somebody that doesn't know what the figures say because they can't read the budget. Thank you. I'm going to have to get back down to where it is. I know what the budget says to me, and I've done 20 of them. The budget is not scary, and it's not something we should be scaring employees with. The budget is going to end up with a minimum of $8 million in general fund. A minimum. 6.7 or whatever it is, plus whatever the fund balance is in the estimate of our CFO. The road and building fund.
If the estimates land like they are, and if the income is even a little better, then it's pretty easy. I know y'all don't like .. Some of you don't. But I'm optimistic that that 8.7 is just $300,000 for me and 9. The money's going to be there in a bigger figure. to me. And we'll wait and see. We'll wait and see. It's all written down. It's just not fair to the employees or the citizens that we're furnishing services to to say, oops, I'm sorry I was wrong. I'm sorry I was wrong. We said we was only going to have $8 million, but we got $11.
We have a different philosophy on how to spend the money. I'm not here for putting the money up if we've got needs for the employees, which basically means we have means for citizens. 70% of our budget is employees serving citizens. And we don't buy it for the employees unless we are in favor of them being able to keep up with inflation. Write these figures down. They're going to be $9 million. when we get all of our figures in. Plus, in the general fund, as of when all of our figures come in for next year, there'll be over $9 million in that account. Now, what will be in road and building?…
There's a whole list, but some of it we don't have to spend. I went over it too. Some of it we don't have to spend. One of the things out of road and building is if we spend one point something on remodeling the bank.
Then what's in there to spend the $7 million in road and building?
The 4.9, part of it's being spent on equipment that may or may not have to be replaced. We're looking at that, too. Look, there's some things we don't have to do. That's why we went to Caterpillar and said, how about we finance this stuff instead of writing a check for it? You know, is that factored in? Are we going to factor in just the payments for this stuff instead of paying for it? And I think you've worked on that. What is in here is the payments for the... What's the estimated balance of the... Your balance will show estimated balance as of the end of... FY27. Yes. So what's the…
If we don't have a good plan for it, and, you know, we've bought, in four years, we talk about a lot of things, but in four years, we've bought property we didn't have to have. We've torn down buildings and moved people we didn't have to move. We've, uh, we've, uh, We gave away a jail that we could have put other things in. It depends on how you think about it. There's a lot of things that will have differences of opinion on them. I'm just telling you, my figures show that we can afford a 3% raise for sure.
I'd like for that to be, and if somebody wanted to amend it to that, yeah. My motion right now is to give the employees 3% raise, but if it helps the feelings, I'll change my own motion to 3% raise today. We could just put it on the table to have a motion. I can amend my motion to say I don't know. Move that we give employees a 3% raise or revisit in January the availability of funds, something to that effect.
I move that we look at the first meeting in January, a 3% pay raise for employees.
I would like to offer a motion. There's some commitments that I've made along with some things that I've looked at in other ways of doing business. I would like to amend the discussion on our budget to include a two-step pay raise to the director of the Emergency Communications District. That would be Aslan working under Patrice. And what that, okay, that was my motion. If y'all want me to explain, not just to give Aslan a raise. If Patrice leaves, right now you've got an assistant director of emergency management that y'all put there. I wasn't here. Three of y'all was here and made a person…
Well, I would agree with you if it made fiscal sense, but a two-step pay raise for her is going to be this big in this budget. I'm just saying we did this to other, we had department heads come to us way back and say, I'd like to move so-and-so up. We had road department, I'd like to move so-and-so up. and what we're doing here we're we're looking out in the future if that person is already she's already six steps lower than patrice for instance you start getting a situation where you're looking at other people that get that job instead of somebody that you can combine already and then you're…
I carried my list with me. We gave several. We turned a lot down. Yeah. And Aslan hadn't recommended it. This came directly from me because I saw what I'm hoping that we end up someday in the future with one EMA director that is also the person that's over 9-1-1
You got any more motions on this budget before I go any further? Well, I think I've got my commitments out of the way. Whether or not I have all the comments out of the way, I don't know.
Yeah, there you go. Usually we put an amount in the minutes.
Two million dollars, whatever it is. Four. Those. Well, count them up. I was trying to count them up while he called them out, and it wasn't four million. A little less than two. Count them up. There's a little less than two million dollars. Now, some of those you could have denied. Some of those you probably have a hard time denying. If you all remember, Mr. Chairman, our policies being not to do capital projects that we had to bid. until later to do them as an amendment. That way the person bidding didn't know how much money we were gonna spend. So those should be, to me, those are all…
But we put in the budget for us. That's the sheriff's building for a SWAT building, didn't we? It was already budgeted, so we didn't have to do it.
So that's one of the amendments, but we did it because we bid it. That was a bid building. And we don't know what kind of price we would have got for it. It was high enough as it was. If we'd have put the word out there, estimated it's going to be half a million. Or the other thing to think about, you know, we put $200,000 in the budget to build the Sheriford building that cost $400,000. We're not thinking further than $1,000, whatever your cost. That's all. As a sitting commissioner, I'm not afraid of amendments. That figure.
I'll let you here by 1230 or so. I would think so.