City council hands down budget cuts

By Alicia Rimel

Published: July 2, 2008

Waynesboro’s new fiscal year began Tuesday and featured a finalized list of cuts made by city council.
Of the initial recommended cuts suggested by former City Manager Doug Walker, council members further slashed $656,984 from that list.
“Overall, I think they did a great job,” said Pat Nicosia, budget director for the city. “They looked at minimizing the impact of the cuts they had to make based on the economic circumstances.”
The public service most affected by these cuts is the Waynesboro Convenience Center, operated by Public Works. After losing $32,000 from their usual trash-hauling budget, the center has been forced “to not accept residential refuse,” according to Waynesboro’s Web site. The center will continue to receive recycling only.
The public has been vocal about the decreased service, officials said.
“The one I’m hearing the most about is the trash hauling from citizens,” said Councilwoman Lorie Smith. “In terms of services cut, that probably is the most significant service cut I’ve seen so far.”
“The convenience center is a prime example of the fact that we will no longer be able to offer a service,” Nicosia said. “That could prove to be a hardship to many people.”
In terms of city spending, however, the cut to the convenience center operation made sense to the council.
“When an earlier council set up the policy, which provided for the convenience center, it actually created competition with our own enterprise [of city trash collection],” Nicosia said. “Money wise, it’s a good thing from the standpoint that you have all taxpayers paying for a service not all taxpayers use.”
Council also made cuts to the Parks and Recreation Department and the Waynesboro Public Library, though officials there do not feel that their services to the community will suffer.
“We did receive some budget cuts,” said Dwayne Jones, superintendent of parks and horticulture. “Certainly, the more money we have, the more projects we could get done. But, I don’t know that any one particular area was hit any harder than another as far as in our budget.”
Bruce Payne, assistant director of Waynesboro Parks and Recreation said it was not as affected by program cuts.
“Where our cuts came in was more in maintenance areas, especially new projects,” Payne said.
Parks and Recreation officials maintained that caps on the number of participants in youth sports is not a result of decreased city funding, but a result of the ratio of coaches to children. The present numbers are 35 participants to four or five coaches. Athletes are entered onto a waiting list once the cap is reached.
In total, $45,006 was cut from the Parks and Recreation budget. The largest cut, $22,500 was made to Rosenwald building improvements.
The library suffered more from cuts in state funding than cuts made by the council. State money provides for the library’s circulation materials.
“We did not ask for any more money [from the city] than we had last year,” said Teresa Gilliam, assistant director for the library. “So, we did not suffer too much of a cut.”
According to Gilliam, the state instituted around $9,000 in cuts to the library’s funding.
City council trimmed $2,593 from library money - these included cuts to staff benefits and office supplies. According to library director Zahir Mahmoud, the cuts will affect “training, conferences and staff development. Services and salaries are on the same level.”
An ever-present issue, the funding of stormwater is cited by council members as a factor affecting the amount of final cuts. The debate rages on between members as to how stormwater should be funded.
“I still advocate the utility as the best way to fund stormwater,” Smith said. “I don’t think it should come from the general fund. It helps to preserve and protect the general fund. I think we have to be very careful to make sure we are meeting the service level and the needs residents expect.”
New Mayor Tim Williams disagreed.
“I think it’s a general fund expense,” Williams said. “I think it would create a whole new layer of bureaucracy [if stormwater was funded by the utility].
“It all boils down to this. The money was there, but we made the wrong decisions. We just gave $300,000 away [to the Wayne Theatre Alliance]. It’s not about always creating more money. If we spent as much time making good decisions [with the money we do have] as we do making revenue for the city, that alone would have kept the convenience center for ten years.”