City spending freeze proposed

A proposed spending freeze for the city of Shelbyville will be on next week's council agenda after a councilman's suggestion.

At the closing of Shelbyville City Council's study session Tuesday, councilman Lee Roy Cunningham asked that a spending freeze be put on next week's agenda.

Cunningham said that he had tried to get the council to vote on the matter "two or three times" but it was never voted on.

"We're going to be in a lot of trouble next year trying to come up with the money to pay these bills," Cunningham said.

City recorder Betty Lamb asked Cunningham what he meant by a spending freeze and councilman Al Stephenson replied "just on anything other than the normal day to day operations."

"We're talking about big ticket items," Stephenson said.

Cunningham said that several months ago, he spotted an expenditure of $142 for donuts.

"Two months ago, there was a bill for $198 for Bell Buckle Cafe," he said.

Lamb said Wednesday that the $198 expenditure was from a get-together of emergency responders and that they are trying to identify when and where the money for the donuts were spent.

Cunningham said that those figures may not seem like much, but adding "a hundred here and a hundred there, then you're up to a thousand, then thousands ...and we need to stop this."

He continued to say that aside from paying employees, insurance and landlord bills, "we don't need to be spending."

Cunningham made the same proposal last October, wanting to freeze both spending and hiring. At the time, the city had a projected deficit of $485,136.

However, the deficit for the city's 2009-10 budget, passed in June, had a projected deficit of $51,659, with estimated revenue of $12,041,519 and expenses of $12,093,178.

Lamb told Cunningham that the city "is actually doing pretty good," stating that department managers are keeping spending under control.

City treasurer Gary Cantrell said several weeks ago that while revenues are down, the city has "under spent" $126,608, meaning that the city is some $2,000 to the good, or "break even."

But Stephenson said Tuesday that "what you have to look forward to, you've got half a million dollars, before we close out this fiscal year, we're going to have to come up with it to balance this budget."

"Where are we going to get it at?" Stephenson asked.

Cantrell said Wednesday that he is "not sure what he (Stephenson) was referring to" in regards to the $500,000 figure.