City approves 2020 budget on 3-2 vote

The Madison City Commission’s second reading of the city’s 2020 budget ordinance on Monday passed with the same vote as the first reading last week.  Commissioners approved the budget ordinance on a 3-to-2 vote, with Mayor Marshall Dennert and Commissioner Bob Thill voting against it.  

According to the ordinance, the city’s total appropriations and accumulations for 2020 total just more than 33-point-six-million dollars, which is an overall increase of just more than one-point-nine-million dollars over the city’s 2019 budget.  City Finance Officer Jennifer Eimers said that the 2020 budget ordinance also includes an unexpended balance of six-point-three-million dollars.

During discussion on the budget ordinance, Mayor Dennert said that he understands what the more than six million dollars in unexpended balance is for, but questions how the city will pay back any loans it may receive as part of it’s proposed Rural Development improvement projects.

Utilities Commissioner Jeremiah Corbin said that the improvement projects need to be done in the city.

Commissioner Kelly Johnson said that passing the city’s 2020 budget ordinance does not bind them to actually spending the more than six-million dollars in unexpended monies.  

Commissioner Thill said he sees the need for infrastructure improvements in the city, but is not in favor of some of the other spending included in the next year’s budget.

Eimers told commissioners that there are a lot of variables with Rural Development, and that the city has a long ways to go, before ever possibly seeing the expenditures for the improvement projects actually put into the city’s 2020 budget.  She said that she went by the recommendations of the Department of Legislative Audit auditors in preparing for the Rural Development projects within the next year’s budget.