At Monday’s Metter City Council meeting, members of the public questioned elected officials on spending practices, their knowledge of state laws, and whether or not the time is right to build a new fire station. The commentary came days after a legal snafu prompted the city council to cancel a public hearing on its planned tax increase and start the process over.
During the opening prayer, City Manager Scott Wood prayed over the meeting, saying “It’s one thing for us to say we want to do the right thing, but sometimes for us, as mortal human beings, we don’t always really know what right is.”
Keith Aldrich, who is running for city council, asked to probe the city council members on whether the city ‘is broke or is on the verge of being broke.’
- James McKie – “I’d say we’re on the verge of going broke.”
- Rashida Taylor – “Same.”
- Victoria Gaitten – “Same, just because of the flow of money, when it comes in.”
- Gregg Stewart – “I would say because of inflation, the city has not kept up with inflation and that has been the problem.”
- Chyrileen Boston Kilcrease – “I think that’s the real challenge right now.”
Aldrich then asked the city manager about comments made at the September 4 meeting. “Someone asked a question about what the total number was for the debt that we are in and I think it may have come up, and correct me if I’m wrong, the first number was $700k and after you made the adjustment with this budget, it was about $940k. Is that number, is that about right?”
City Manager Scott Wood replied that Aldrich’s numbers were correct, but his use of the word ‘debt’ was not. “Our initial budget projections indicated about a $750,000 shortfall. After the budget hearings, with the addition of the firefighters in particular because I think we had the 911 fee incorporated initially, it would have come up somewhere just south of a million dollars.”
Aldrich replied that there is some concern by citizens that the city may be on the brink of being broke and he questioned whether or not the city should put some things on hold. “That’s a fine line. When it comes to public safety, police, fire, city streets and lanes, there are certain things that you can’t put on hold, but would it be fair to say that right now, until we get our feet back under us, that we could put that on hold? And also, we cashed in two CDs two or three weeks ago. What was the amount of those?”
Wood asked if the city cashed in one or both, but said it would have totaled “around $200,000.”
Aldrich replied that “That puts me in the mindset that we are broke.”
He then told council that their decision to approve a city manager for $130,000 with two city council seats coming up for election was premature. “Would it have been fair to let the new council decide who fills that seat being that they’re going to be the ones working with him for the next four years.”
Wood replied that Aldrich made some good points.
Gabe Cliett asked city council members to elaborate on their justification for choosing ‘being broke or on the verge of being broke.’ “What is your rationale for your vote just now that we’re on the verge of being broke, versus broke?”
James McKie – “We have a cash flow problem, not an unbalanced budget problem. What I mean by that is that there is a budget that we have approved that will fund the city and it will continue to operate without issue. The problem, however, is that the income into that budget doesn’t come until later in the year. As it stands right now, our problem is cash flow and the reason we had to cash those CDs in was because we don’t have cash coming in. Taxes and most other revenue start in October and they go to the first of the year. This part, which is the beginning of the budget, we just don’t have the income and our budget is to the penny and we don’t have any extra here and there’s no loose change laying around and because of that, we’ve got a cash flow problem. So we’re almost broke, but so long as we can keep moving along, we will be fine. It’s budgeted, it’s balanced.”
Rashida Taylor – “Well, for me, ‘ditto’ what he said, but also, we’ve seen these challenges before. I don’t necessarily say that we’re almost broke, but we do have a challenge and so with that, we see this often. Within these past few months, we’ve had a lot of public engagement, but for the past eight years that I’ve been on council, we’ve seen a lot of these challenges before and so it hasn’t been so much of a ‘push-pull’ or a ‘not as confident in what we’re doing here’ but I do believe that what we’re doing is the best interest of our citizens…I think we’re doing the right thing. I can’t add anything different than what he said.”
Victoria Gaitten – “I think you’re right. James definitely explained it to the point. I mean our cash flow comes in at different times of the year, we won’t start seeing the taxes until October.”
Cliett asked, “So this is a problem we have every year?
Gaitten replied, “I can’t speak to every year.”
Taylor said she didn’t think it has been a problem every year, to which Cliett asked why it’s a problem now.
“This year, there’s a lot of different things going on. For one, the hurricane, the prior storm, I can’t remember the name, and the other storms, we weren’t reimbursed until like two years later so there’s been a lot of cash flow issues. We’ve had a lot of things that have been pulling on the money. So it is always low around this time, but this is the lowest that it’s been,” Taylor said.
Gregg Stewart – “As I said, the city has not been keeping up with inflation,” noting COVID and the price of things that have continued to increase over the last five years. “We were just trying to maintain that. I don’t call it ‘being on the verge of being broke,’ I call it being tight.”
He then said the city should have raised taxes more.
Chyrileen Boston Kilcrease – “I concur with everything that James said even though things are tight, we do tend to persevere and maintain the city and I wouldn’t necessarily say that we’ve gone broke. We do have funds to carry us over if need be, but we’ve not gotten to that point yet.” She then said she’s been on council for 25 years and every year they have rolled back taxes and not increased taxes. “Now we’ve got to increase and everybody’s going to have to feel that bite in order for us to do things that we need to do.” Kilcrease said she had faith that everything would work out.
Citing the incessant phone calls he’s received and the outcry on social media, Cliett replied that he didn’t agree with what Kilcrease was saying. “I don’t think they have faith. In fact, I think this council will go down as the worst city council in the history of Metter in my lifetime.”
Lack of Council Member Attendance at Public Hearing
Cliett then said that citizens showed up to the public hearing last Thursday to discuss the budget and the millage rate, but only one city council member was present.
Kilcrease replied, “I work and on that particular day, I probably was at work.” Cliett replied that he works, too. “My job doesn’t allow me to be here at 8:30 a.m., I’m a nurse and I leave home at six in the morning to travel to Swainsboro to be on duty, but if I’d known…” Kilcrease said.
Cliett said he appreciated that but that council should show up if the argument is that the elected officials are “working for them.”
“It really shows where your moral compass is and where it’s lacking when you won’t bother to show up for those meetings specifically,” Cliett said.
At that point, Mayor Ed Boyd said Cliett was ‘off topic,’ but then continued to discuss the topic.
“We all agree the timing was bad and if I may, I’ll interject something on behalf of the council here. Most of the time, we have public hearings right before our council meetings and all the council members show up because we’re getting ready to have a meeting. And in this case, the Department of Revenue requires that we have a strict schedule if we have a tax increase…and unfortunately that meeting got rescheduled and we had two council members that notified us that they could not be here and the other two work also out of town so I’m going to take the blame for that because the city clerk was usually, she has to make sure somebody’s going to be here and she was not able to do that and I should have been the one picking up her slack on that and I did not do it. But we usually have the council show up and a morning meeting is rare.”
Cliett replied that he was aware of what the Department of Revenue’s rules are, but none of the city officials were.
“We were not familiar with those rules and we still can’t find them,” Boyd replied. “And I feel terrible about that and I apologize to the community for us not knowing that we had to have a quorum here to transact that meeting.”
TheGeorgiaVirtue.com reported the state laws and regulations on the matter here.
Breakdown in Community Receiving Information
Resident Susan Crooms said there is a breakdown in the community receiving information.
“We know that there are council meetings, we know there’s a budget. We know that the council has to approve all these items. It’s not something we think about. We all had the opportunity to be here when you set the budget. Did I think about it? I did not. Did anybody else? Obviously not, because nobody was here,” Crooms said.
“I’m not blaming anyone. It’s all perspective. Do we need a new fire house? Yes, absolutely. Should we start working on that? No, we shouldn’t. When we have the money for it, when we have a better buffer for the fall of the year when we’re down…every one has ups and downs in their budget. But if you know you’re going to have a down every fall, or six months out of the year, you need to have a better coffer for that.”
Crooms then said that telling people that they’re going to see $100 or more tax increase while looking to spend money on the firehouse and getting rid of the old firehouse is what comes across ‘badly.’
“And the lack of communication about it,” she said. “I will do better to get outside my bubble but we need your help to try to get us more involved in that.”
“Okay,” Mayor Boyd replied.
Discussion on New Fire Station
Council fielded questions about the construction of the new fire station.
Aldrich acknowledged that the $3 million for construction was to be paid for with SPLOST funds and not money from the General Fund, but said he was concerned there would be other costs associated with construction that the city could not afford.
“I see that it’s going to cost us $65,000 to demolish the old fire station…can’t we hold on all that right now?…I don’t like to play with public safety, but I do think this is something that we need to weigh heavy on our hearts because I know you guys are hearing it, the community knows it.”
Wood told Aldrich that the fire department is currently in a temporary facility and it is impacting the ISO rating. He also said that the city has been kicking the fire department can down the road for twenty years and ‘looking for reasons not to do it.’
“Obviously this council can make the decision to withdraw this interest, but I personally don’t think the welfare of the city is served by continuing to kick that can down the road. I think you gotta belly up, it won’t be any easier this time next year,” Wood said.
He also asked the public to remember that the public voted to approve the SPLOST collections and to dedicate the funds to the fire department.
“I would submit that the city is not doing what the public has already charged it with by not going forward with building the fire station.”
Do you know if they record these meetings or livestream them?
I wouldn’t expect them to, but you never know. I’d like to watch it or hear it, if possible.