Minutes 06/24/1975 - Laserfiche WebLink

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. "'l L'. , .: . ..........::> -'l. JUNE 24. 1975 TUESDAY I feel that City Council is fully aware of the elderly people of our city_ These citizens have no way of controlling what City Council does in the way of setting rates. We fully realize they have set incomes and there may be some hardships on them. I hope that City Council will take a hard look at this situation within the next few weeks and come up with some way to help these people who are 65 and no way of increasing their income and who are barely making it as it is. (b) Vice-Mayor Hobson: I am one who has pushed for better pay and benefits for our city employees; and feel that they deserve it. However, I am concerned that we get maximum production from our city employees. The citizens have a right to feel assured that if three men are working on a particular job for the city that only three men are needed to get the job done. We should get a dollar's worth of labor for every dollar of tax money spent. This may necessitate the need to evaluate every department as to cost of labor in relation to work produced. Due to many factors, we have problems in our city in balancing our budget, without curtailing too many services. One problem is our downtown renewal program. As a member of the CBD Committee, I am as interested in the success of this program as any citizen in Martinsville. I understand that no more buildings will be torn down until we get a committment from a developer. I think this is as it should be. The recent assessment has increased property taxes for our citizens, which has placed a tremendous burden on all tax payers, especially those in the low income bracket. Therefore, I am proposingrthat we give consideration to holding the tax rate at $1.85 and using most of the $100,000.00 capital improvement money to help balance the budget. As the economy improves I hope this will not be necessary. Councilman Fitz-Hugh proposed that the budget be adopted on the basis of $1.85 real estate tax rate, with some modification of proposed salary increases for supervisory employees; whereas, Councilman Lester, reiterating his objection to an across-the-board salary-wage increase, proposed a 4% salary-wage increase for employees presently earning less than $7,500.00 per year and a 2% salary-wage increase for those employees earning more than $7,500.00 per year, and a $1.35 real estate tax rate. Councilman Lester then offered the motion that Council grant a 2~% across-the-board salary-wage increase and, furthermore, approve a $1.35 real estate tax rate. For lack of a second to this motion, no action was taken thereon. Vice-Mayor Hobson then moved that