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The Clarksville City Council met Monday, July 6 to approve the first reading of the Fiscal Year 2027 budget. SUBMITTED <\/p>\nThe Clarksville City Council met Monday, July 6 to approve the first reading of the Fiscal Year 2027 budget. SUBMITTED <\/p>\n
It took five attempts, but in a Special Session held Monday, July 6, the Clarksville City Council approved the first of two readings of an ordinance that would adopt the Fiscal Year 2027 budget.<\/p>\n
The approval failed in four previous Special Sessions. <\/p>\n
The budget proposal now moves toward a second vote, with a 10-cent property tax increase in place. The current tax rate of 92-cents per $100 of assessed value would increase to $1.02. <\/p>\n
At the close of Monday\u2019s meeting, the council approved the ordinance\u2019s first reading in a 7-6 vote, with the votes of yes coming from Clarksville Mayor Joe Pitts and Councilmen Brian Zacharias, Carlos Peters, Tim Chandler, Travis Holleman, Stacey Streetman and Keri Lovato.<\/p>\n
The votes opposed were from Councilmen Eric Claunch, Ambar Marquis, Wanda Smith, Jerry Haywood, Jimmy Brown and Joe Shakeenab.<\/p>\n
Amendments approved during the Special Session came from Mayor Joe Pitts, Councilmen Keri Lovato and Joe Shakeenab.<\/p>\n
The mayor\u2019s amendment has reallocated $350,000 from the Transit Department\u2019s capital fund to its operating funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve frozen all the capital projects,\u201d Pitts said. \u201cSo, we\u2019re just moving that back into operating so it will not short them and affect staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ward 12 Councilman Lovato\u2019s motion was approved to move $2.4 million of funds for a new fire truck for Clarksville Fire Rescue into the Capital Improvement project.<\/p>\n
Three of five motions from Ward 11 Councilman Shakeenab were approved, including the reduction of funds in the Human Resources Department by $75,000.<\/p>\n
The councilman defended his effort to reduce funding in the departments proposed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the rate we are going right now, if we don\u2019t approve a budget, [the tax rate] is going to be at 92-cents,\u201d Shakeenab said. \u201cSo, a whole lot of stuff is going to get cut if we don\u2019t approve a budget. We\u2019re either going to work to try to minimize, or we will stay at 92-cents.\u201d<\/p>\n
The council approved Shakeenab\u2019s motion to reduce the budget for the Building Maintenance, Forestry and Tree Board budget by $75,000 and the I.T. Department funding will be reduced by $50,000.<\/p>\n
His motions to reduce funding for the Transit Department and the Parks and Recreation Department both failed.<\/p>\n
Ward 6 Councilman Wanda Smith opposed reducing the funds needed for city\u2019s transportation needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will affect the senior citizens and citizens who use the bus to get to work,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWe do need our transit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ward 1 Councilman Brian Zacharias said cuts to the Transit Department would make life more difficult for some of the most vulnerable people in the city.<\/p>\n
Ward 10 Councilman Stacey Streetman\u2019s effort to reintroduce funds for three main road projects in the city was denied.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to get moving on these infrastructure projects,\u201d Streetman said. She proposed spending $512,500 to fund for one year the Needmore Road project, the Memorial Extension work and the roadwork for Rossview Road.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s get Clarksville moving,\u201d Streetman said. The vote failed in a 6-7 vote.<\/p>\n
In hopes of bringing the tax rate down further, Ward 5 Councilman Ambar Marquis proposed an amendment to reduce the $1.2 million in funding to the Parks and Recreation Department to operate the Ajax Turner Senior Citizen Center. The council voted her amendment down in a 6-7 vote.<\/p>\n
Councilman Smith said when the council meets to consider the budget ordinance\u2019s second reading, she will bring a motion to the table to keep the tax rate at 92-cents.<\/p>\n
The date of the second reading has yet to be announced. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Clarksville City Council met Monday, July 6 to approve the first reading of the Fiscal Year 2027…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-237482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}