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After much discussion and multiple votes, the LaGrange City Council has approved planned increases to utility rates and employee pay in a split vote.

About a month after the draft budget was proposed by City Manager Patrick Bowie, the council ultimately approved the budget that includes small rate hikes to utility services, including sanitation. 

After two weeks to mull it over and hear from the public, the LaGrange City Council discussed potential budget cuts, including a planned raise for city employees.

For most residents, utility customers will see an average increase of about $5.81 per month for electricity and $6.43 for gas. Garbage pickup is also going up, so for standard 68-gallon can will pay an additional $1.20, or 85 cents more for the larger 96-gallon cans.

All in all, customers are looking at around an additional $13 per month.

The budget also includes a five percent pay raise for city employees, which was hard to swallow for some council members, considering the utility rate increase and the recent $10 million Terry Talley settlement, half of which came out of the city’s reserves.

During the morning work session, Councilman Nathan Gaskin suggested rolling back the pay raises for city employees from five percent to 2.5 percent.

“There’s been a lot of talk about unity and community,” Gaskin said.  I love it. I’m a part of it. But if my residents are going to take a hit, the workers have got to take a hit. We’re all in this together. If you want to talk about unity, that’s unity.”

“We all are in this boat together, residents, as well as the workers. The workers’ job exists for the sole purpose of serving the residents of the city, and if they’re in bad shape, I can’t justify going up on their utility rates and then turn around and then raising pay and raising everybody’s wages,” Gaskin said, noting that city employees have seen consistent annual raises for 25 years.

Councilman Mark Mitchell’s issue with the raises wasn’t only the utility rate increases, it also was the Talley settlement.

“I look at it as I look at my own finances. We just took a $5.25 million hit to our savings account. That’s the taxpayer money that we just had to spend. We’re also going to go up $13 per residence per month. That’s hundreds of dollars a year,” Mitchell said. “With us taking this huge hit to our savings, we’ve gotta replenish those savings. We’ve gotta have four —usually have four months’ worth of revenue in case of disaster. Anything can happen. We need that reserve to be able to run the city.”

Mitchell suggested that city employees are already well compensated, especially due to the city’s retirement program, which many cities are doing away with.

Councilman Quay Boddie suggested using Community Development funds to help residents purchase more energy-efficient items for their homes and provide literature on setting their thermostats properly to help reduce their electric consumption and lower their bills. 

“I’m still thinking about that small pocket of people who just will not be able to afford it, period,” Boddie said. Other than those two things, I’m okay with the budget. It’s a no for me on the five percent [raises], and it’s a no for raises on utilities,”

Councilwoman Darby Pippin said that raises are important for retaining employees, but suggested giving raises based on performance rather than across the board, rather than the current system of either giving them the five percent or not.

“What I’d like to see is a performance-based system. I don’t think that all of the employees perform the same. And it’s my understanding that essentially, they’re given a zero percent raise and put on probation if they’re not performing, or they’re given a five percent raise. I think there needs to be somewhere in between. That gives employees an incentive to go above and beyond. Otherwise, it’s essentially penalizing the employees,” Pippin said.

After a second reading was held for the budget during the evening regular meeting, Mitchell made a motion to amend the proposed employee raises from five percent to three percent, with the savings difference being used to reduce the electric rates for residential customers.

Before the vote on the amendment, Councilman Leon Childs asked Bowie how much that would equate to a rate reduction for customers. When Bowie was unable to provide those numbers, Childs suggested tabling the issue to allow him to determine the exact change to the rate.

Ultimately, the council voted 4-3 to deny the amendment to the budget to reduce the raises from five to three percent, with Councilmembers Tom Gore (via phone), Childs, Boddie, and Mayor Jim Arrington breaking the tie in opposition, and Gaskin, Mitchell and Pippin in support. The council then approved the original proposed budget, 4-3, along the same lines.

The utility rate change ordinances were then approved unanimously, except for the electric rate change, which was only opposed by Boddie.

Pippin noted that even with the small hikes, the City of LaGrange’s rates remain well below local alternatives.