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Friday, 01 July 2011 22:16

City to freeze unnecessary spending


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City to freeze unnecessary spending

The city will freeze unnecessary buying for the next two months until tax revenues begin to roll in during September, interim City Manager Ed Wyatt told council today.

The measure addresses cash flow concerns council discussed at a meeting in which this fiscal year's budget was approved, Wyatt said.

The freeze will exclude needed expenditures such as vehicle maintenance. Determinations may have to be made on other items, Wyatt said.

Wyatt suggested the city also look at joint buying between departments. “That would help us work to save money.”

After some negotiating last week and talking with department heads, council unanimously agreed to trim $373,301 from this year's financial plan.

There will be no job reductions from the trimming and it will put back into the budget $160,000 for a new trash truck.

The new budget keeps in the latest longevity plan for city employees, funding it at 100 percent. Also accounted in the reductions is $250,000 from deferring this year's balloon payment on the Roanoke Rapids Theatre and some $60,000 in savings from going with a new property and casualty insurance policy.

The $373,301 reflects $20,000 added back into the budget because former Parks and Recreation Director Chris Wicker will be taking a job with his church and will eventually not be performing his part time grant writing duties. Funding for that position now includes only $5,000.




 

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Lance Martin

Lance Martin

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comments  

 
+4 #6 8-/ 2011-07-03 02:59
Quoting letsgoastepfurt her:
I disagree. If the mayor and city council aren't willing to do their job, maybe someone like the finance director should be allowed to force the city to save money. Lord knows we need to. And I can't think of anyone who would know more about all spending than the person
writing the checks. If we let the finance dept do all purchasing, we can probably cut at least four other positions citywide, and the finance director has already said she can do this without adding anyone to her staff. Sounds like the finance director may be the only one really thinking outside the box.
That has to be one of the biggest lies I have ever heard. This finance director doesn't have a clue about what any department needs. She can't even run her own department smoothly. this is just a ploy for a power hungry old lady who hopefully will be gone once we get a manager in place with any concept of what our city really needs .
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+1 #5 Mr. Baseball 2011-07-03 01:23
Well the City Cuncilman seems to have a new fience arounf the Travel ball fields.. Great job saving money.. oh right their kid doesn't even play Rec league over here.
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+2 #4 Maureen 2011-07-02 19:06
A city as small as Roanoke Rapids should have centralized purchasing, and not be duplicating the function across multiple departments. As long as an open, full disclosure purchasing policy is adopted, we can avoid some questionable spending and cronyism in how tax dollars are spent. Some checks and balances are what has been lacking here for too long.
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+4 #3 letsgoastepfurther 2011-07-02 16:43
I disagree. If the mayor and city council aren't willing to do their job, maybe someone like the finance director should be allowed to force the city to save money. Lord knows we need to. And I can't think of anyone who would know more about all spending than the person writing the checks. If we let the finance dept do all purchasing, we can probably cut at least four other positions citywide, and the finance director has already said she can do this without adding anyone to her staff. Sounds like the finance director may be the only one really thinking outside the box.
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0 #2 concerned 2011-07-02 13:21
Who is behind the freezing of money for day to day operations? The finance director. The same person who wants to take over purchasing like she knows better than public works which vehicle parts should be kept on hand, which magazines the public reads at the library and which office supplies everyone should be using. While I think Ferebee was right to want to freeze capital spending, city council voted not to do that and they never discussed freezing the operating funds. The finance director has no authority to deny department heads the right to the money that city council has authorized them to spend. If they don't spend it properly, that is a job for the city manager, not the finance director.
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+2 #1 cwec 2011-07-02 03:11
Out with the old and in with the new. It will be interesting to see if there will be truly some changes made or after a while it goes back to the same old business of keep spending today and forget about tomorrow. This council should have started saving a year ago but they dropped the ball. Look at the amount of money being spent on the avenue project that could have put to a better use, such as paying some of the debt on the RRT.
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