Centerville lowers city property taxes and raises city pay

Tuesday evening, Centerville Mayor and Council met for their regular monthly meeting, and was able to successfully and unanimously agree upon a lowered millage rate as well as reinstate merit raises for city employees.

“I love to see this one this year,” Mayor John Harley said as it came time to discuss the adoption ordinance for the millage rate.

City Account Carol Harrison spoke on behalf of the discussion item, saying, “We need to adopt the rollback rate, which is the 11.944. That,” she pointed out, “will be just a slight decrease in property taxes for our citizens. We have made the required advertisement of the five-year history and the 2020 tax levy. That has been advertised in the Houston Home Journal as required by law. And as mayor and council does approve… we will check the box where we are locking in at that rate.

The motion to adopt was passed unanimously.

In addition to lowering property taxes, mayor and council also reinstated merit raises for city employees. Upon introducing the item of business, Mayor Harley requested that the city accountant offer some background on it.

“The mayor came to me, and I said I’d kind of do an estimate if mayor and council did decide to reinstate the merit increases for the employees for the fiscal year 2021 budget,” Harrison told council, further adding, “I did do an estimate, and I believe I emailed that to everybody. It was about $67,000 for general fund and $16,000 toward if there was a decision to reinstate increases for employees.”

“Just so we’re clear,” Councilman Justin Wright said when the floor was open for comments, “what we’re saying is that previously, when we adopted the budget, we did not include those merit raises out of the abundance of caution. And at that phase, it was certainly possible that the revenue could be down and with uncertainty as to what our revenues were going to look like with COVID-19 in effect. What we’re saying now is that it doesn’t appear that those revenues have taken a significant dip, and so now we are amending the budget to add those merit raises back in. Am I correct in summarizing that?”

“Sounds flat out,” Harrison responded. “Yeah, here we are, September 1, so we really have two months of revenue. So as far as the full year revenue and the full comparison, I can’t say that it’s not going to be a little bit down. I think what the mayor was saying is that we have had the opportunity to get some grant money from the state, which is the coronavirus relief fund—the CARES Act—and I think he saying that that opportunity put some extra money there that we can now anticipate. Am I correct, Mayor?”

“That is correct,” answered Harley. “We received an initial payment of $123,000 reimbursement for expenses that occurred in the last fiscal year. So those funds are basically available in our system right now. We need some of it anyhow, for other reasons, and we’re still having COVID-19.”

Adding clarity, City Attorney Rebecca Tydings said, “We have received $123,000 toward expenditures between March and June. We’ve also applied for the 70% of phase one, which is $288,000 that’s also for the time period between March and June. My understanding is that that’s approved, but we have not received that at this point.”

“That’s correct,” confirmed the mayor. “The $288,000, like you said, has been approved, but we haven’t received it yet.”

Upon the end of comments and discussion, council unanimously agreed upon the merit increase.

In another “good news” matter that also involved city employees, mayor and council were asked to consider and approve an Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield addendum for vision insurance participation.

In a comment regarding this, Councilman Micheal Evans said, “We’re always looking for ways to save our employees money on their benefits, and it looks as though we’ve found a program that will do just such.”

City Clerk Krista Bedingfield shared the details. “This is a supplemental vision policy that’s being offered by our current provider, our Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield through Georgia Municipal Association. The vision coverage would be effective January 1, 2021. We currently have our health benefits and dental through Blue Cross Blue Shield, and the benefit would be a minimal cost to the employee for their biweekly deductions. Just seeking tonight for approval for Mayor Harley to be able to sign this approval to the addendum to our current benefits.”

Mayor and council gave unanimous approval.

A Windstream agreement for Center Park at Centerville was another item on Tuesday’s agenda, and Director of Economic Development Kate Hogan took the podium to address council.

“In front of you guys, you have a Windstream Kinetic business service agreement,” Hogan stated. “This has been reviewed by City Attorney Tidings. We’re waiting on an understanding from their legal department in regard to a couple of terms and conditions edited. They are reviewing it and they’ll get back with us as soon as possible. Should it be a problem, it’s just in the confines of what the city can obligate itself to, and then also Ms. Carol Harrison has reviewed the application for credit in the packet as well, so I’m just bringing this forth for the mayor’s signature at the time that the service agreement is accepted by Windstream with the changes City Attorney Tidings has suggested.” Hogan mentioned that they had also approached Cox Business for a quote, but Cox was unable to provide one that covered the 1G Wifi needed.

Councilman Wright raised the point that the city had had some problems with Windstream in the past, but Hogan explained that the company had a new brand now with it being Windstream Kinetic, and there should not be any issues. It was also noted that the problems in the past did not involve Windstream’s internet service.

Council gave unanimous approval to move forward with this item.

The approval to prepay a Synovus loan for the building of Centerville’s new fire station was a matter of discussion for mayor and council. Of the banks that the city had approached for the funding of the station, City Accountant Harrison mentioned that Synovus was the only one that gave the option to exercise a prepayment.

“Not only did they have the lowest rate,” Harrison pointed out, “but they also had that redemption of payment principle.” According to Harrison, the prepayment option could be a large savings for the city. “In this situation, we did have some SPLOST money in our bank account,” she noted. “It’s only earned about one-tenth of one percent in interest, so we might earn $1,300 if we left it there. With the option to exercise prepayment, we could take about $900,000 of that money and prepay it before the end of September, and we could save approximately $130,000 in interest.”

The approval to allow the prepayment option and amend the SPLOST project budget was given unanimously by mayor and council.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Councilman Wright gave kudos to the management and employees of the city of Centerville. “I’m just really excited about the ways that our department heads and leadership of this city have been such good financial stewards during a time when the whole world said there’s not going to be any revenue.” Later, he added, “It’s very uncommon in government to get to see somebody lower taxes and raise the pay for their employees on the same night. That goes to the excellent job that our staff does in handling all businesses.”

“That’s the family working together,” Mayor Harley commented during the session. “I’m really excited about this too. It’s been a great night.”

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