Johnson Speaks Out on Redistricting, Budget Approved

Deviating from the City Council’s Work Session agenda Wednesday evening, Mayor Judy Jordan Johnson said the proposed Georgia General Assembly legislative redistricting will cause the city to have six different representatives. In efforts to prevent that from occurring Mayor Johnson has spoken with three to four times. She has also sent a personal letter, acknowledging her disapproval of proposed redistricting, to House Speaker David Ralston, Rep. Clark and Hunter Bland of the Appropriations Committee.

In the letter, Johnson stated although she realized that redistricting has to take place due to the 2010 Census, “but to divide one city into six different sections with six different representatives, just makes (for) a difficult situation”. She thanked Attorney Lee Thompson, Jr. for speaking before the Georgia Assembly as a concerned citizen and not as a representative for the city.

SPECIAL SESSION:

Item 1: Approval of FY 2011-2012 Budget and Item 9: 2009 SPLOST Funds—Raw Waterline Project---Councilman Tony Powell made amendments to the city’s proposed budget before it was voted on and passed 4-0. Powell asked for approvals of salary adjustments contingencies for (gas) locate (tech) positions, Planning Director and court data processing. He also asked to have a scheduled budget review process in consideration for next year’s budget, in similar form to what was presented to the council used by the City of Duluth.

City Manager Bob Baroni asked the council to approve a decrease of capital outlay funding for the water treatment facility by $834,497.00 and increase the revenue side of the administration by the same amount of $834,497.00. This would take budget contingencies to about 2.3 million.

“The explanation for doing that is changing the raw waterline project out of General Fund to, since we came in under bid for the general water line already attributed, to the 2009 SPLOST (Special Projects Local Option Sales Tax),” said Baroni.

Powell said he agreed with the City Manager’s recommendation and asked council to approve the line item number nine adjustment of the waterline reallocation to the SPLOST fund. This will drop the capital outlay in the water treatment plant to $665,503 from the original 1.5 million, said Baroni.   

Councilman Powell said although budgeted, he wants acquisitions and capital expenditures to continue to come before the council for approval. “They are budgeted, but not authorized without farther actions from the council,” said Powell.

In spreading out the budget process, Powell said this will garner more planning involvement of department heads to lessen the budget dependence on the City Manager. Powell would like to see a process much like the one utilized by the City of Duluth.

There are major variations in percentages in the final 2010 income statement; where the closeout percentages are 200 to 300 times greater than the budgeted amounts said Powell. “The budget is not being utilized the way that I think it should be as a monitoring tool.”