Contested city budget delayed until April 12 as negotiations between mayor and council continue

There was an official sign Tuesday that budget negotiations between Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. and the City Council are making headway.

The council unanimously approved a motion to postpone the effective date of the budget they approved March 14 until April 12, the day after the council is scheduled to have its next meeting. According to a statement read into the record by President Pro-Tem Clay Carmichael, the council is due to get information from Perkins by March 30 concerning the budget, with the apparent goal of presenting a compromise budget at the April 12 meeting.

According to the statement Carmichael read at the March 28 meeting, the motion is part of a “settlement” of legal action Perkins took to stop the budget approved by the city council March 14 from taking effect. Perkins filed a request for a restraining order to prevent the council’s budget from taking effect, but the hearing was cancelled because Perkins said that he and the council “are working together in an attempt to resolve the issues at the heart of the recently approved budget.”

The statement read by Carmichael is part of that “working together.” The statement said that the effective date of the budget the council approved is pushed back to April 12, and the mayor and council have agreed that there will be a hiring freeze until April 12 except for drivers with commercial driver’s licenses, which are critically needed.

The Selma City Council approved a budget on March 14 that gave city employees a raise, but paid for the raises by eliminating 57 positions and four departments. Perkins said he was unaware that the budget eliminated positions, which led to him asking a judge to issue an injunction to stop the budget from taking effect.

The city’s budget was due Oct. 1, 2022, but the mayor and council were unable to agree on how to produce a budget that included a minimum salary of $12 an hour for city workers sought by Perkins. Perkins told the council March 14 that the city is unable to keep city workers because the city only pays its laborers $9 an hour.

The city has operated under the 2022 budget since Oct. 1 while the mayor and council worked on a new budget that included a minimum wage of $12 an hour for laborers and $16 an hour for skilled workers. City workers staged a work slowdown during the summer to show their support for a higher wage.

A majority of the council felt that the budget could not support the higher wages, and Perkins suggested several times that the council ask Selma citizens to approve a tax increase to cover the higher cost of running the city, including paying a more competitive wage to its employees.