“We have been dependent on the fire department to have this equipment, but the state is not allowing that anymore,” said City Manager Bill Stan-kiewicz.
The city needs to be able to provide its own testing and safety equipment in the event of a gas leak.
Stankiewicz proposed the service charge for the city’s 900 gas customers and said it would take about a year to collect enough money to buy the equipment. City Council requested the service charge come off the gas bills after the year is up.
“I’d like to see that,” Councilman Charlie Frank Martin said.
The service charge is the only proposed fee increase in the budget, on which council will have a public hearing June 15. Stankiewicz has yet to draft the official document, but came to council’s work session Monday with a list of recommendations for the spending plan. Like other cities and governments, Hogansville is dealing with unpredictable revenues given the current state of the economy; Stankiewicz said the city’s “enterprise” funds - water, sewer, electric and gas sales - all are below projections. Local-option sales-tax revenues, which the city is depending on for a number of infrastructure projects, are equally dubious. April revenues were one of the lowest in history while May was one of the biggest month, Stankiewicz said.
“We just get a check from the county, we don’t get an explanation,” he said.
The county divvies up the sales tax revenues to Hogansville and West Point.
“(County Manager) Mike Dobbs is pulling his hair out, he doesn’t know what to expect,” Stankiewicz said.
Stankiewicz asked that employee raises, which usually are given with the start of a new fiscal year, be deferred to Jan. 1 - or later.
“It pains me to do it,” said Stankiewicz, who asked that money be set aside for promotional raises.
For example, one employee has passed the first test to go from an electrical groundsman to a lineman, another employee just received a higher certification to operate the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
The estimated 15 employees who call the city shop on Lincoln Street stand to benefit, however, from some improvements Stankiewicz wants to make this year, including new lockers and furniture.
“It’s long past time,” for improvements there, he said.
The employees have no tables and chairs to sit on during breaks and recently the old lockers were taken out, leaving them no place to put a change of clothes or a sack lunch. The building also is in need of a new roof.
Stankiewicz said the city may contract with Cintas, a uniform company, to provide the lockers. The company could rent the city lockers for a monthly fee based on the number of employees, which could be cheaper than buying them outright.
The new roof is a possible project for federal stimulus money, he said.
Jennifer Shrader may be reached at jshrader@ lagrangenews.com or at (706) 884-7311, Ext. 236.
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