City Holds Budget Hearing

Monticello City Council members convened Monday evening to conduct a public hearing to discuss and set the millage rate and review the preliminary budget for the forthcoming fiscal year.

The hearing was attended by the full council including Larry Thurman, Jenny Murphy, Bryan Standifer, Stone Workman, Cynthia Miller, and David Wease and city clerk Lathaydra Sands. However, no public attended the hearing.

The first order of business was to discuss the setting of the millage rate for Monticello which would be a rollback of 5.864. The mill rate is the amount of tax payable per dollar of the assessed value of a property. It is a figure that represents the amount per $1,000 of the assessed value of property, which is used to calculate the amount of property tax.

Mayor Standifer noted that Monticello has had no increases in the millage rate for the past 20 or so years.

Moving on to the budget, the new fiscal year budget is projected at $9,611,742 for the city. As council members mulled the numbers, some discrepancies were identified and pinpointed to the city clerk for her clarification.

Mrs. Miller questioned changes in the retirement payments that rose signifiantly from the current fiscal year to the upcoming one. She also had questions about the group insurance rates from Blue Cross Blue Shield.

It was pointed out that the street department showed abnormal increases as well.

Mrs. Sands said that the figures in question did not appear the same on her copy and that she would review the numbers with the Georgia Municipal Association personnel that helped compile the spreadsheets. She did note that only changes in the executive, finance and street departments should be reflected in the new budget and that any discrepancies noted could be corrected and reflected in a new budget draft by Wednesday.

With that information in mind, the council agreed to set a budget work session for Thursday, June 7 at 6 p.m. to review the budget following the corrections before voting to adopt the budget during the regular meeting of the council on Monday, June 10 at 6 p.m. The meeting was scheduled for Monday instead of the second Tuesday due to conflicting events within some of the council members schedules.