Mayor, council agree to meet to work out budget disagreements as fiscal year nears

The Selma City Council and Mayor James Perkins Jr. agreed Tuesday to sit down together this week to work out the city’s budget for the rapidly approaching fiscal year.

The new fiscal year starts Saturday, and state law requires the city to have a budget approved by then. The council voted Tuesday to operate the city on this year’s budget until the new budget is approved. This action, known as a continuing resolution, will buy the city time to negotiate a new budget and comply with state law.

City Council President Warren “Billy” Young said the continuing resolution will give time for “tempers to come down” so the mayor’s office and the council can “compare (budgets) and work this out like adults.”

Perkins proposed a $23.8 million budget that included a 5% raise for all employees and raising the minimum wage for city employees to $13 an hour. The council proposed a $19.6 million budget without the 5% raise and a minimum wage of $12 an hour.

Employees in public works, parks and recreation, and the cemetery departments went on strike for a day and pledged to do “minimum work for minimum pay” to protest the council’s budget. Some department heads have also taken to the airwaves and social media to complain about salaries and items not funded in the council’s budget.

Perkins, who generally does not attend council meetings, said he came to Tuesday’s meeting “to get some of the issues and questions raised answered and hopefully come up with some resolutions. We’re in the 11^th hour of getting the budget approved.”

After hearing from Perkins and some other officials, Young said that it was clear that the administration and the council “are not on the same page” regarding the budget, and he said it was time “to move on and negotiate and try to work something out.”

While the city operates under the current budget, Council Finance Committee Chairman Troy Harvill and perhaps some other councilpersons will meet with Perkins and some of his staff this week to develop a budget. That budget will be brought back to the council for their vote. By law, the final decision on the budget rests with the council.

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If a majority of the council wants to be in on the negotiations, the meeting will have to be public under Alabama’s open meetings law.

The mayor’s posed budget of almost $24 million balances for the 2023 fiscal year because it includes American Rescue Fund monies and some budget surplus. The mayor and the council agree that the problem lies in the 2024 fiscal year when those funds will not be available. Perkins has said the city should seek more revenue by asking citizens to approve a property tax increase before 2024. The council has so far been unwilling to go that route.

Perkins told the council Tuesday that the city is currently operating close to the almost $24 million he proposed, and the city has more than $5 million in available reserves. “The city is not broke,” Perkins said.

Before the council voted to negotiate with Perkins on the budget, Perkins complained that the council “has shown an unwillingness to hear” the administration’s position on the budget. “We need to have this conversation,” he said. “I’m not picking a fight.”

Young said that while he heard “a lot of different things I wanted to object to and say, ‘That’s not true’” in Perkins’ characterization of the budget negotiations thus far, he said he chose not to respond because “it would not have made any of this any better.”

Young said the current disagreement between the branches of city government “is a result of a 34-year argument.”

“It’s been too long,” Young said. “The result is, we’re in shambles. There is so much discord. It shouldn’t be this way.”