By John McCallum
Editor 

Council reviews discretionary requests

 

Last updated 11/10/2016 at 10:31am



The Cheney City Council held a budget workshop Nov. 1 to review a list of 27 discretionary funding requests from departments that will be included in the 2017 budget, 24 of which have already been approved.

All told, 61 discretionary funding requests were made, totaling $3,656,950 and of which, $1,359,800 will be funded in the coming year. Items selected for funding varied from $7,000 for iPads for council members to a pair of truck purchases for the light and solid waste departments.

Paying for the items utilizes a mixture of levy lid lift, departmental reserves and other taxes and fee revenues anticipated to be received in the coming new year.

Three of the 27 items were forwarded for council discussion last Tuesday. Two requests came from the Light Department — $200,000 for a small bucket truck and $19,000 for some specialized tools.

The department spent $232,000 last year to buy a new, large bucket truck that foreman Travis Billigmeier told the council is used on larger, three-phase power jobs. These projects require four people, two in the bucket — which it is capable of handling — one on the ground and another as a safety watcher.

The department’s smaller truck’s bucket holds just one person, and is capable of getting into locations the larger truck can not.

“It does probably 80 percent of the work,” Billingmeier said.

Finance Director Cindy Niemeier said power rate increased in early 2015 had done a “nice job” of restoring the department’s resources, which had been depleted through needed equipment purchases and the council’s decision to use reserves to hold rates down through the recession of the last decade. Prior to 2015, Cheney power users had not had a rate increase since 2004, while electrical purchase costs from Bonneville Power Administration had increased by over 20 percent.

The other department requests included special tools for pulling power cables and a power quality meter that can be used to identify issues with a customer’s power supply.

Billingmeier said utility crews used to pull electrical cable by hand, but more businesses coming to Cheney requires larger cable sizes and often over longer distances, something requiring special tools. The department also gets calls from 6 – 12 customers a year complaining about power problems and higher than expected bills. The power quality meter can be inserted onto the customers incoming power line to track and record the usage 24 hours a day for as long as needed to identify the problem.

The final discretionary item forwarded for council discussion was a $240,000 request from the Solid Waste Department for a curbtender, or the truck residents see when the city comes down their street to collect their garbage. Public Works Director Todd Ableman told the council the current truck, purchased in 2010 when the city began its solid waste service, is capable of making collections in hard to reach places such as alleys and between vehicles, but has required about $70,000 in repairs the past two years due to the type and high volume of use it experiences.

Niemeier told the council that departmental reserves were also sufficient to cover the purchase, due in part to the reduced tipping fee at the city of Spokane’s Waste to Energy plant the city negotiated in 2010.

The request brought concern from Councilman Doug Nixon, who said he didn’t question the need, but rather the frequency. Nixon said in doing research, he had been told by officials at Sunshine Disposal that similar solid waste trucks should last 7 – 9 years.

“It’s one of those things where we give it to you, and you come back and want something more,” Nixon said.

Cheney Mayor Tom Trulove said the city could do a better job with its fleet management, not just in solid waste. But he added that since the city got into the solid waste business in 2010, they had been gaining expertise in how to operate its system.

As they did with the Light Department equipment, the council agreed to the purchase of the Solid Waste Department’s curbtender.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.

Author Bio

John McCallum, Retired editor

John McCallum is an award-winning journalist who retired from Cheney Free Press after more than 20 years. He received 10 Washington Newspaper Publisher Association awards for journalism and photography, including first place awards for Best Investigative, Best News and back-to-back awards in Best Breaking News categories.

 

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