City council members left its final budget work session Tuesday morning believing it faced the prospect of approving a budget with a roughly $1.8 million deficit, which would require dipping into cash reserves to cover.
By the time the council unanimously approved the budget at its Tuesday evening meeting, that deficit was down to about $160,000.
Chief Financial Officer Jim Brigham credited the shift in fortunes to “finding a couple of mistakes that I made.” Among those mistakes, according to Brigham and Ward 6 Councilman Jason Spears, who chairs the city’s finance committee, were miscalculations in payroll projections and counting the payoff for tax-increment financing debt twice in the draft budget Brigham presented to the council.
Brigham credited “teamwork” to putting together an acceptable budget. During Tuesday’s meeting, he gave special credit to Spears for helping him nail down the numbers, a matter of weeks after publicly criticizing the finance chair for meddling in the budget process.
“We have worked extremely hard, but what I’m proud of about this budget is that we worked as a team,” a tearful Brigham said Tuesday. “We put a lot of work into this budget. It’s not everything we want, but it’s everything we need. In particular I want to thank Councilman Spears. Some citizens may think he and I don’t get along. That’s not the truth. The truth is we respect each other, and we may not agree with each other, but we’re truthful with each other.”
“Teamwork makes the dream work,” Spears responded.
Speaking to The Dispatch after the council meeting about Brigham’s errors, Mayor Stephen Jones said “mistakes happen.”
“It doesn’t really concern me as long as he got it straight in the end,” Jones said, adding the weekslong budgeting process had been “grueling.”
The budget shows cash reserves dropping from $7.96 million to $7.8 million next fiscal year.
The new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
What’s in the budget
The city’s roughly $29 million budget includes 3% raises for almost all employees, as well as $243,000 in additional targeted raises in the police department.
It creates six new positions across several departments, including city accountant, technology specialist, fire inspector/EMS liaison, bucket truck operator and maintenance technician.
The budget also includes about $750,000 to pay off the TIF debts early for University Mall and Moores Creek and $500,000 to jumpstart amphitheater operations – all money the council had braced to come from its cash reserves before final corrections were made to the budget.
At Tuesday’s budget session, Spears suggested budgeting staffing in large departments – such as police, fire and public works – at 90% since those departments are chronically understaffed. Brigham believed that would create $1.2 million in budget savings. However, Spears said corrections to those figures showed significantly more savings.
Brigham and Spears both also doubled the sales tax growth projection from 2% to 4% in the final budget, which added another roughly $240,000 in revenue.
That sparked some debate from council members Tuesday morning, particularly Ward 3’s Rusty Greene, who favored a more conservative estimate.
“Your first projection was 2(% growth),” Greene said. “Now you’re coming back at 4. Is there a compromise in there at 3?”
“But then you’re just guessing,” Spears responded.
“I thought that’s what we’re doing at 4,” Greene said.
Spears argued that with rising costs, his growth estimate is not “overshooting ridiculously.”
“Even if we see a stagnation of prices at these higher rates, it’s still going to produce higher because consumption is not slowing down,” he said.
City Attorney Jeff Turnage warned against the public perception of missing the sales tax projection mark, particularly since The Dispatch publishes collection totals monthly.
“If you over-project on sales tax, then every time the monthly sales tax comes in, we’re going to be on the front page of the paper ‘lagging’ (behind) the projection,” Turnage said. “Which is a bad thing because you don’t want to be behind your budget.”
This fiscal year, the city missed its $12 million sales tax projection by about $24,000, but collections grew by 3.07% from Fiscal Year 2025.
What’s not in the budget
At Spears’ urging, planned targeted raises for fire department personnel, totaling $337,000, were removed from the budget draft Tuesday.
Firefighters will still see the 3% raise.
Spears said the fire department’s plan wasn’t as well structured as the police department’s. He also argued the police department’s staffing issues are more pressing.
“Everybody … knows well the staffing issues we’ve had at the police department,” he said. “If we’re going to target raises to get a department kickstarted, that’s where we would want to start with. The fire department, they need raises too, but their plan was not as defined as what (Police) Chief (Garland) Ward gave to us.”
Jones pushed back, saying that move would “send a message” to the fire department.
“Both of them were defined,” Jones said. “You’re choosing the police department over the fire department.”
“If you want to phrase it that way, go right ahead, Mayor, but that is not what is happening here,” Spears responded, indicating he wanted to revisit the fire department raises next year.
Jones said he supported those raises staying in primarily since it was public knowledge they were in the budget draft.
“Putting something out there in public that you’re giving it to them, then taking it back, I don’t think that’s fair,” he said.
Cut from the budget also was a $100,000 special projects fund.
The positions of grant writer and public information officer, which had been in the FY 2026 budget, were not included for next fiscal year.
Other business
In other business, the council:
■ appointed Nic Parish to the Golden Triangle Development LINK Board;
■ approved purchasing $31,767 in holiday decorations at the request of Main Street Columbus;
■ approved hiring two deputy clerks for municipal court;
■ approved hiring four certified officers, two reserve officers and rehiring a certified officer in the police department; and
■ promoted four firefighters to engineers in fire and rescue.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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