Jackson Free Press

The Jackson Police Department is reporting $684,167 in savings during the first quarter of this budget year--an improvement from the department's fiscal policies under former Mayor Frank Melton and Police Chief Shirlene Anderson, who allowed the department to use half its overtime budget within the first three months fiscal year 2008.

Police Chief Rebecca Coleman helped generate the savings by managing officer overtime, coupled with a drop in officers from 500 to 480.
The Fire Department managed to save $551,238, Human and Cultural services saved $90,228, and Public Works saved $202,817. General government, which includes the city clerk's office, the legal department and the mayor's office, managed to save $151,792.

"Departments saved $1.4 million this first quarter by filling only critical staff positions and very careful spending," said Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson, Jr. at a Jackson City Council budget committee meeting yesterday.

"We expect sales taxes to be below budget by $2.3 million by the year-end," Johnson added. "We're asking to adjust the budget to transfer $1.3 million out of the budget's applied fund balance and reduce departmental budgets by $1 million to make-up for dropping sales tax revenues."

The city may not be laying-off employees at this point, but the $1.4 million in departmental savings will not likely be repeating itself, even if the city continues its restrictive hiring practices for another three quarters, according to the mayor.

CORRECTION: The original story reported that Deputy Chief Tyrone Lewis contributed to the
The city has a recruit class for police officers gearing up toward the end of the budget year in October, which could impact spending in that department, and Johnson said the summer months will herald the opening of public swimming pools and neighborhood enhancement programs in Parks and Recreation.

"We're going to constantly look for ways to save money and enhance our revenue," Johnson said. "We don't think we're at the bottom of this, but we have been able to manage the deficit we have with the resources that we have."

City Administrator Rick Hill said the city actually lowered the state economist's projected sales-tax estimate for the city by an additional 1 percent, but discovered that even this conservative estimate was not low enough.

Johnson said the slumping economy has put a hit on purchases within the city, and he fears revenue from property taxes to be flat this year, despite the addition of newly annexed property in south Jackson. But conservative departmental spending, coupled with additional money left over from the Melton administration, left $2.7 million in city savings. These savings have no connection to the city's $8.6 million fund balance reserve, which helps set the city's credit rating when determining bond projects.

The council, as the city's legislative body, must approve the mayor's budget recommendation at the next budget committee meeting, which will allow the greater council to vote on the adjustment.

Ward 7 Councilwoman Margaret Barrett-Simon said she was happy with the adjustment, especially considering that other municipalities were having to lay-off employees and cut city services to balance their budgets.

"I feel comfortable with these budget transfers considering how little pain is involved," Barrett-Simon said.

Johnson said the city is also trying to drum up Municipal Court collections by using a new system of collecting outstanding warrants.

"We've gone to a new system where we're segregating our outstanding warrants by precinct, and we're giving those warrants to precinct commanders, We gave about 1,000 warrants to the Precinct 2 commander and the beat officers will start serving those warrants," Johnson said, adding that the Municipal Court collected more than $500,000 in February--a $124,000 increase over expectations.

Johnson said he wants to pinpoint exactly what the municipal court was doing right in February, and suspected some gains arose from the fact that the police department "is simply writing more tickets."

CORRECTION: The original story reported that Deputy Chief Tyrone Lewis contributed to the JPD's budget savings. City Spokesman Chris Mims said however, that Police Chief Rebecca Coleman is the only person responsible for the savings.