City board 8SEPT2020: City raises decided, city budget completed, etc.   

The New Albany Board of Aldermen at its special meeting, Tuesday evening, Sept. 8, completed work on the city budget for fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2021.

The board made these revisions in the budget originally submitted on Sept. 1:

• The mayor and board members will not receive salary increases during the coming year.
• Other city workers will receive across-the-board raises of 1.5% instead of 3% as originally proposed.
• $36,000 was added for the purchase of two motor vehicles for the New Albany Police Department.
• $38,000 was added to pay for completion of the city’s comprehensive plan work being done by Orion Planning and Design Group. This partial appropriation fulfills some of the original amount proposed by Orion in 2018 and is not an added expense of the plan.

In another city budged related issue, the board did not add money for a part-time city planner as proposed by First Ward Alderwoman Amy Livingston at the end of the Sept. 1 meeting. Livingston had requested adding $20,000 to the coming year’s budget to pay for a part-time consultant to help implement the city’s comprehensive plan.

In other action Tuesday evening, the board approved a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) project for work on the Emerald Furniture building and approved Elliott and Britt as engineers for the project.

The board approved participation in a State Archives and History grant for improvements to the Magnolia Civic Center. The grant is for an 80%/20% division of the cost with the city’s 20% amounting to $2,090.

The board unanimously approved Moises Lemus as a member of the zoning board. Lemus replaces Chad Bailey.

The next regular meeting of the New Albany Board of Aldermen will be Tuesday October 6, 2020. The Board of Aldermen is meeting. Meetings of the Board of Aldermen are generally being held in one of the larger rooms at the Magnolia Civic Center, in order to be able to comply with social distancing requirements related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Previous budget discussion: http://newalbanyunionco.com/comprehensive-plan-and-budget/