MANSFIELD — Mayor Jodie Perry said a budget is a monetary reflection of priorities, which the new leader will unveil for the first time Tuesday during a City Council meeting.
Less than two months after taking office, Perry and Finance Director Kelly Blankenship will present the administration’s permanent 2024 spending plan.
It will replace the temporary blueprint approved by council in December, devised by then-Mayor Tim Theaker and former Finance Director Linn Steward, both of whom left office at the end of 2023 following 12 years on the job.
Planned general fund expenditures will remain flat at around $35 million, though the budget shifts money around to better meet the aforementioned priorities, according to the mayor.
City Editor Carl Hunnell sat down Friday with Perry and Blankenship to discuss the budget. The plan is to give three readings to it before a vote on March 19. The following are excerpts of that conversation:
Hunnell: Describe the biggest philosophical budgetary differences that you think you have from your predecessors.
Blankenship: “I’m not sure how I would describe my predecessor’s budget philosophy. So I’m not sure how mine would compare. I do know that right now we’re working on kind of past practices, because this budget was initiated before we took office. So we aren’t developing our own budgetary philosophy (in the 2024 plan).
“Jodie and I both have changes that we would like to see happen in the whole budget process. We are obviously not able to even consider that right now. But moving forward into this next budget process (for 2025), we intend to start earlier. We are going to take a deeper dive into things and hopefully move away from the era of temporary budgets and move directly into permanent budget at the end of the year for the next year.”
Perry: “Someone told me once the budget is a monetary reflection of your priorities. When we present the budget on Tuesday, I’m going to be talking about growth, infrastructure and safety and how these additional changes are helping us move that vision forward.
“I think when we get to the 2025 budget, I don’t know if we’re taking it all down to the studs, necessarily. It’s a big budget. But I have been really thinking about how does the budget overall reflect those priorities? We both are in agreement. We want it to be much more of a presentation of the city’s plan for the next year. Not just money, but what are we going to do and be able to talk about upfront.
Hunnell: Are you making sweeping changes to the temporary budget council approved in December? Or are you planning more incremental changes until you have more time to invest in the budgeting process?
Perry: “I would say it’s not significant (change). The 98 percent of the underlying budget is the same. There are some small things that are reflective of new people being here and needing some things. But relative to the budget, those are very, very small changes, to be honest.
“The biggest difference is going to be in capital investment. We had some unappropriated balance left that we’re allocating towards some of the capital investment purchases or asks that had been originally taken out of there.
“There was capital in the temporary budget, primarily in water, sewer and streets … in the special fund areas. There was not much (other) capital, if any at all. There was maybe a little bit in the general fund, but not much. And so that’s where you’re going to see the change.
“We’re adding some capital back into that, to invest in that. And again, really thinking of that through the lens of growth, infrastructure and safety.”
Hunnell: Where are you planning to put the majority of those capital dollars?
Perry: In the police department, there’s going to be additional funds for replacement of vehicles. They’ve got some other small equipment needs, SWAT vests, things like that. That’s the biggest chunk.
“We will also be putting general fund money towards the parks budget for the first time in recent memory. We are allocating $100,000. It’s a small but significant step in that direction.
(Since the parks department was restored in 2014 after a five-year hiatus when the city emerged from fiscal emergency, its only source of funding has come from the voter-approved PRIDE tax. That generates about $850,000 annually for the city parks. An additional $100,000 from the general fund would represent about an 11.7-percent increase for the parks budget.)
“I really want to do a comprehensive plan. When we’re looking at growth for Mansfield, that is something we’re missing. It’s something developers want to see. It’s also something we need because the comprehensive plan is the road map for the city’s future.
“So we’re moving some money into it. It’s really under the industrial development budget, but that’s where that’ll come in.
“We also added capital into the fire department to upgrade to the MARCS (digital) radios. I believe the Mansfield Fire Department is the only agency (in Richland County) not on it. That has been a pending ask from them.
“Those are kind of the big ones.”
Hunnell: One of the most talked about things I hear from residents is code enforcement. Stopping blight. Stopping illegal dumping. Mansfield only has two code enforcement/building inspectors to cover the entire city. What does your budget call for there? How does that fit into your view going forward? Are you looking to build that up?
Perry: “The budget changes do not make any staffing changes, period, other than what has happened in the first couple months with newly elected officials. There’s a few small changes there.
“But again, I did not want to use unallocated (funds) to add repetitive costs, recurring costs. So I’m not adding bodies yet. But code enforcement, attacking issues of blight and dumping, that has been a very big source of conversation already internally in the administration.
“Ultimately, they don’t have enough capacity. There’s not enough people there. So that I do want to solve, (but) that’s going to have to take a little bit longer.
“However, I will say that doesn’t mean we’re not going to do anything. We’ve already done a few things related to dumping. But we’re really trying to bring together all the departments that touch those things, because it’s not just codes at the end of the day.
“I think there’s some opportunities for improvement in cooperation among departments. It wasn’t that they weren’t cooperative. I don’t want to make it sound like they were against each other. That is not it. But maybe they weren’t always all talking.
“And so what we talked about this week at our staff meeting actually is — you’re going to see us set some meetings around topics, versus just the ‘what you do.’ Codes enforcement, blight, dumping is definitely high on that list.
Hunnell: Are you talking about improved communication between departments? For example, if a street department employee sees blight developing or observes illegal dumping, she should tell someone?
Perry: “I think it’s that team philosophy that we’re really trying to build here. When you think about it, there’s a lot of city employees. You’ve got the street department. You have cops that are out every day. You’ve got firefighters. There’s a lot of people out there that see things that may not touch their department. We have had a little conversation of, ‘How do you make that easily reportable?’
“That could get overwhelming, so there’s some technology things that I think could help us with that. But for now, the biggest step forward that we’re really trying to take is the conversation with the department heads. (For example), just because your title is in economic development, and you may think it doesn’t impact our growth prospects if there are weeds and overgrowth … it does. It doesn’t help us grow the community.”
Blankenship: “And beyond the scope of just her departments, it requires cooperation from the other elected officials, as well. They can identify and cite the issue, but then we need the enforcement piece to let the community know that we’re serious about addressing this. We can hand out citations all day long. But if they’re not being enforced and there’s no repercussions for not paying those citations, then it’s fruitless.”
Perry: “I think the current set of elected officials (including the law director’s office and Municipal Court judges), philosophically, we have actually all talked about that we want to work together. So I’m very optimistic that we will be able to move that needle more than in the past.”
Hunnell: Will the budget you’re presenting on Tuesday to City Council look physically different than budgets we have seen in past years?
Blankenship: “No, not dramatically different. We’re letting council members drive that change because obviously they’re the ones with the final decision and the final vote. So we’re asking them what it is they want to see.
“What has been requested from us is the 2023 final budget, 2023 actual expenditures, and the 2024 proposed budget. So just those numbers for their comparison’s sake, still passing the budget at the classification level. But we are also going to provide a supporting document to all members of council that will drill down into the line items within the classifications. But the legislative portion of it will still be at the classification level.”
Hunnell: Is the goal a balanced budget? Are we there yet?
Blankenship: It’ll take a couple of years. We still have got to change the old culture from eons ago, the spending frenzy at the end of the year because everyone thinks if I don’t spend it, I’m not going to get it.
“So we have to get them first thinking holistically about their role in the city and that it’s not just me and my individual needs in this department, but it’s the city as a whole and with broader goals for advancement. And then once we can get them thinking like that and comfortable with the fact that if they do have a need, it’s important to the administration and it will get met as soon as it can be met.
“But not to just spend frivolously because it might disappear next year. And that’s gonna take a while to change that philosophy.”
“Jodie and I talked about that strategic plan and our budget is going to drive our progress toward meeting those goals. The whole process we’re hoping to achieve is going to be a whole different thought process for everybody. But that can’t happen in one year or even two years.”
Perry: “I think it’s been practice for a while, that to balance the budget, they’ve been taking capital out. And then towards the end of the year, when they were underspent in areas, that’s when capital would come in.
“So it wasn’t necessarily frivolous spending. I don’t want people thinking the city was buying things they didn’t need. Because I don’t really think it was that overall. But we both want it to be much more planned. That’s the goal. If we can balance the budget, the overages become our capital fund.
Blankenship: “Eventually, we want to have a capital improvement plan that goes along with the budget document that is proposed and passed every year. ‘This is our plan for operational spending and this is our plan for capital spending.'”
Hunnell: You’ve both had less than two months to pull this together. What are your thoughts on the process of getting to this point?
Perry: “It’s been a big learning curve for me, certainly. I’ve enjoyed diving in. I very much like to have the big picture before drilling down into details. So now, for next year to be able to drill into details more, I think will be helpful.
“But I’m excited. I think in the end, the things that we’re planning for those additional investments are good, they’re needed. We were able to add small things that are meaningful to the departments that haven’t been updated in some time. So it excite me that our department heads feel like they are being heard, as well.”
Blankenship: “It’s the mayor’s budget. She is going to lead the charge in presenting it to council. But we are going to sit there and purposefully tell them what went into our thought process in providing the documents that they see.”
Hunnell: What else do you want people to know about this budget?
Perry: “Something that people don’t often understand is the city has a general fund. But then the city has a lot of other funds, including water and sewer and streets and the PRIDE tax, etc. Beyond the general fund, there’s a lot of other things happening.
“Often I hear people complain, ‘Well, you’re spending this money on this, why don’t you fix X?’ A lot of the time the answer is, I cannot spend that money in that way. And so I think one of the things that we’re hoping to do as we head forward is to communicate better when we’re talking about projects, talking about how they’re being funded and those (funding) sources to try to help people understand it.
“I can’t spend street money on police or fire. Those that are close to it, get it. I guess it’s helpful that I’m coming in from the outside. So how can I help to translate that because I want people to understand and feel confident in the choices that are being made.”
Blankenship: “People don’t understand the flow of funds. They think as soon as your money comes in, it’s like your checkbook. You get your paycheck and you can spend it however you want on your bills, not on your bills, this bill, that bill, let’s go do this fun thing.
“But when you have money coming into the city, most of it is earmarked for some purpose that you have no say over. A lot of it, like the projects, the infrastructure, we have to go find other funding sources to leverage what we have in order to make those projects happen. But the public sees, ‘Oh, you’re spending this much money on this without any knowledge that this much of it came from the city coffers.”
(Below is a PDF showing legislation scheduled to be considered by Mansfield City Council on Tuesday.)
