Council wants more discussion of 2019 budget

SPRINGDALE — The City Council on Tuesday night sent the proposed 2019 city budget back committee for further discussion. Mayor Doug Sprouse submitted another option for getting raises for city employees, and members wanted time to review it.

“I was trying to read the tea leaves and considered the comments the council members made last night. I came up with option two,” Sprouse said, referring to a budget review meeting Monday night. Council members also asked for more time then to consider and discuss the budget, looking for options to pay for the raises.

By state law, council members have until Feb. 1 to approve a spending budget.

Under the new proposal, employees wouldn’t get the full amount of raises as proposed in the original budget, but the pay adjustments would still follow the model set by a compensation study, Sprouse said.

“The pay scale would still be intact, but we will reduce the step amounts,” Sprouse said. He said the increases would still be significant and probably more than the city’s usual step raises.

And it would cut $750,000 in expenditures from the general fund budget, Sprouse said.

The city commissioned the study this year, which showed most employees make much less than they could doing the same job in another Northwest Arkansas city. Many qualified, skilled and trained employees have taken jobs in those other cities, all city department heads report.

Sprouse originally proposed the city pay for the raises by changing the way the council allocates tax revenue. Currently, 50 percent of a onecent sales tax the city collects is funneled into the capital improvement fund, while another 50 goes to the general fund. Sprouse suggested cutting the capital improvement amount to 40 percent, giving 60 percent to the general fund to pay for these raises.

Also, sales tax receipts have grown in the city and projections for growth should pay for the raises in future years, he said.

But council members have been uneasy with the proposal, both with basing the big-ticket, permanent expenditure for raises on projections, and also with reducing the amount of money dedicated to capital improvement projects.

Eighty percent of the city’s budget goes to employee costs, including salaries and benefits, said Wyman Morgan, the city’s director of administration and finance. The city will spend $36.8 million for personnel this year, and $39.5 million was proposed in the city’s 2019 budget.

“I think this proposal option today can be a way of making these raises happen, without taking a substantial decrease to (capital improvement fund),” said Colby Fulfer, a council member. “Everybody up here wants to try to find a way to make that happen.”

Fulfer suggested the issue could be revisited in six months, and if tax receipts continue to grow like expected, the council could grant the full raises.

“I hope in presenting this other option, you’re not throwing the first proposal out,” Sprouse said.

Springdale firefighters, police officers, other city employees, a student and even Boy Scoutmaster Holtz Smith, who attended the meeting with his Scouts to help them earn a merit badge, spoke to the council in favor of the wage increases that would make Springdale’s salaries competitive in the local labor market.

Sprouse noted seeing some of the same faces before him 10 years ago. “When I said we just couldn’t give raises,” he said with a bit of unexpected emotion.

The city had to cut its budget by 10 percent in 2009 and 2010, and no one got raises of any kind for three years, explained District Judge Jeff Harper.

Mike Price, president of the local firefighters association, thanked the city officials for their work and congratulated them on Arvest Ballpark, the downtown revitalization project and the passage of the 2018 bond issue which will provide the city with nearly $200 million for infrastructure projects.

“Over the years, the men and women of the city have taken a back seat to other projects,” Price said. “We have not complained or argued with your vision. We let you build the city.

“But this year, we ask that the men and women, the heart and soul of the city, take a front seat. Show them they are just as important as everything else.”

“I like the proposal the mayor made first,” Harper said. “I was the city attorney for 26 years. And city employees have waited a long, long time for equity with other cities. That day has never come.

“I trust the mayor. If he says he can do it, we can do it.”