The Mayor and the Finance Department introduced the 2022 budget to Council on Thursday to accomplish our goal of passing the budget before the end of the year. Doing this will allow us to go out to bid for items early in 2022 for capital equipment and projects. The goal of this is to have projects more likely to be completed in the same year they are funded. This past year our road program went out for bid so late that it will likely not be completed until spring of 2022. Some items to note from the initial introduction:
- Our debt is expected to be $14.1M at the end of 2021, the highest overall debt the City had was $33,565,000 at the end of 2008.
- The plan is to increase the headcount in the City in 2022 for a total of 247 total employees.
- The plan for 2022 is not to expand to any new services, but to focus on improving existing services.
- Our expected carryover amount at the end of 2021 is $8.7M, in 1993 the lowest carryover balance ever occurred with only $46,000.
Council will continue to review the budget with additional Finance Committee meetings taking place to review the different areas of our budget over the next two months.
Council approved the application of 3 grant applications to AMATS for several potential projects for repaving, signalization updates, and a bike trail project. These projects will be reviewed by AMATS, applications submitted 10/29, then will go through a review project with knowing by the end of year for the award of projects. Projects are awarded based on a point scoring system, on a couple of the projects Stow will lose points because in the past Stow is the highest awarded city from AMATS other than the City of Akron.
Council approved the hiring of a new firefighter due to an upcoming retirement that will take place along with the approval to hire a new assistant prosecutor in our law department to replace a recent resignation. The Law Department already had a candidate for their position and Council approved that candidate as well.
Council also approved an increase of $100,000 to the 2021 overtime budget for the fire department. There has been discussion in our City along with several news articles in the last several months, our fire department has seen significant increased wait times when they are transporting patients to hospitals and this requires us to call in firefighters who are off duty to cover our stations until the firefighters on shift can get back to the station. It was also stated that there has been an increase of sick time needed in the fire department as well. I understand that our firefighters have been on the front line of dealing with the pandemic for the last year and that there are many things that are out of their control when it comes to limiting overtime. This was approved 6-0 at Council (Shaw was absent).
Mr. McIntire also proposed that we put an 18-month moratorium on car washes in the City of Stow. This would prevent any new car washes being approved or built in the next 18 months. I believe all of the members of Council have heard frustration of our residents over the last 12 months of the number of car washes that we have seen come about in the last several years. This will address those concerns along with allowing review of our zoning code to see if we should have ongoing changes to address an oversaturation of specific types of businesses.
The next Council meeting will take place on November 11th, after the Election. Please make sure to get out and Vote November 2nd!