Proposed Danville budget contains few changes

The proposed $244.5 million city budget for fiscal year 2008-2009 doesn’t include any tax increases, but does include increased costs for gasoline, training and new equipment.
The budget was presented to Danville City Council at a special work session Thursday night at the Institute for Advanced Learning & Research.
Each city department head explained their department’s budget, which were uniformly defined as “flat” except for general “cost of living” type increases and personnel costs — such as gasoline and diesel fuel cost increases, rising health insurance costs and higher Employee Retirement System costs.
Several departments also reported increased costs for training new employees, such as in Central Collections, where there is a new computer system and new employees.
The overall $8 million increase over last year’s budget also includes the cost of a new power substation that will serve the area by Intertape and Swedwood.
“You can attribute (the increase) to personnel, economic development incentives and we’ve got some CIP (Capital Improvements Plan) projects in there,” Cynthia Thomasson, Danville’s director of budget, said Thursday.
She said Danville currently has two substations to deliver electricity, and if one went out of service for any reason, brownouts and blackouts could occur because the one remaining station could not handle the city’s requirements.
“You can put businesses out of business by not providing electricity,” Thomasson said. “We’re at a point where we have to have a third delivery point. It will cost $7 million.”
One area of concern is that the city still does not know what to expect from the state in many areas of the budget, including transportation.
City Manager Jerry Gwaltney said that budget cuts in that area could affect plans for replacing the Robertson Bridge, because delays in funding will mean costs will rise and put the project out of reach any time in the near future.
“Legislators, whether they are ours or not, are not doing their job,” Gwaltney said, adding that he would be getting together with local legislators in the near future to discuss problems the city would face if state cuts go too deep.
Public hearings for the city budget and the school budget will be scheduled in May.
Contact Denice Thibodeau at dthibodeau@registerbee.com or (434) 791-7985.