Budget time approaching for Clinton

By Randy Bell    

City leaders won’t begin budget hearings until August 19, but they’re already crunching the numbers that will determine how much they’ll have to spend in the 2027 fiscal year.

“We’ve actually started on the budget earlier than we have in years past,” says Clinton Mayor Will Purdie. 

He and City Clerk Jimmy Baldree have been looking closely at the current budget as FY26 winds down.

“Once we get close enough to the end of the year, we can make really good and fairly accurate guesses as to where we’re going to wind up,” the mayor says.

“We’ll sit down, and we’ll start looking at where we are in each department, some places where there may be obvious adjustments.  We’ll get the broad structure and skeleton in place [for the FY27 budget], and then we’ll start working with department heads to work in each individual department request, staffing needs and things of that nature.  There will be multiple versions of that.  Then, we’ll have the budget hearings with the Board of Aldermen, who will go through it and give their opinions and suggestions as to what they think should be done.  The City Clerk and I will go back and incorporate those.  And then you’ve pretty much arrived at a finished product.”

Last year’s budgeting process was complicated by a couple of unpleasant surprises.

First, the City learned that it would receive about $400,000 less than expected in tax revenue from car tags, due to inaccurate information from Hinds County.  Then came word that the Fire Department had exceeded its overtime budget by some $357,000 as firefighters doubled up to cover vacant shifts.

That left the mayor and Board with a hole of almost $1 million to fill, a task they were able to accomplish as they finalized a $22.2 million budget which included a three per cent pay raise for City employees, $1 million for street paving and $300,000 for drainage projects, all without a tax increase.

This year, Purdie says, “Certainly we are going to fund as many department head requests as we can.  We’re still in the process of figuring out which ones we will be able to do this year and which we won’t.  My goal is to at least begin a large-scale salary restructuring, so that would obviously be in excess of last year’s budget.”

But, overall, the mayor says the outline for the new budget “seems to be pretty level so far” compared to the FY26 spending plan.

As the current budget year wraps up, Purdie has been keeping an eye on how much the City is spending on fuel.  He says he’s been “shocked” that rising prices haven’t caused a problem for the departments that spend a lot of time on the roads.

“They’ve all been right at or even a little under [their fuel budgets],” he says.

Unlike last year, Purdie hopes to get accurate tax revenue figures from the county and doesn’t expect to be dealing with another overtime deficit as the new budget is put together.

“We have changed how overtime is accounted for and how it is budgeted,” he says.  “And it seems to be working well.”

Clinton firefighters have been waiting for a significant increase to make their pay competitive with fire departments in nearby cities.

“One of my stated goals, and I know one that the Board shares, is to get City employees on par salary-wise, at least middle of the pack, with surrounding municipalities,” Purdie says.

“We’ve seen the drawbacks of not being able to do that in the past, where we can’t hire and retain [employees] for a lot of these lower-level positions.  So, that is certainly something that I plan to start working toward this year.   To that end, it is my intention to propose a set of readjustments, with [the fire department] to be included.”