Danville Mayor Scott Eisenhauer is proposing an FY 2017 – 2018 Budget that he says is balanced while overcoming challenges. But the Mayor told members of the City Council’s Public Services Committee last night that he no longer is proposing a utility tax. ”As we move forward with this budget proposal we’ve abandoned the idea of utilizing a utility tax, but instead are creating an enterprise fund as it relates to storm water management so that the fee that is implemented as part of that plan will go 100-percent toward storm water,” says Mayor Eisenhauer.
The Mayor adds the fee would be based on the amount of impervious surface for properties – such as asphalt, concrete and roofs – with a base fee of $3.50 a month. He says most homes would pay that base fee, but for large properties it would be capped at no more than $1,000 a month. The Mayor also proposed raising the monthly Public Safety Pension Fee from a base of $4 per month to $8 to help pay the rising costs of pensions. And he said a Special Service Taxing Area in the Lynch Road Area would be eliminated.
The Mayor also noted that it was a couple of years ago that the city council implemented a Public Safety Fee with the intent of using it instead of raising property taxes to address rising pension costs. ”Here we are again looking at a million-dollar increase in pensions over last year – and those numbers are projected to go even higher over the course of the next three years. So we would just simply increase the Public Safety Fee in order to try to meet half of that growing cost of public pensions while then at the same time reducing our expenditures to meet the other half of that obligation,” says the Danville Mayor.
Mayor Eisenhauer says the budget he is proposing will include expenditure reductions while still maintaining city services. The budget discussions will resume when the full City Council meets next Tuesday.
