By Dave Fidlin
Correspondent
With tax bills slated to arrive in residents’ mailboxes in a few short weeks, the long and winding road toward adopting a 2014 municipal budget in the City of Whitewater is drawing to a close.
In the past two months, city staff and the Common Council have been busy performing line item-by-line item reviews of the city’s various departments. The two groups had their final thorough review at the council’s Nov. 5 meeting.
Operations plans for a number of city departments – including the Irvin L. Young Memorial Library and the Whitewater Police Department – were discussed at the most recent meeting.
Based on numbers included in the budget, plans call for the library to shift it’s funding from the city’s general fund to a specially designated fund for the library itself. The maneuver is to allow more flexibility for Library Director Stacey Lunsford and her staff as plans are tweaked.
In the year ahead, library hours are expected to increase Saturdays. The facility will be open to patrons from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., representing two additional hours from current operations.
The police department, meanwhile, plans to reduce funds for overtime staffing, and a revised plan has been implemented to assist with the effort. A number of expenditures – including $35,000 toward police vehicles – are included in the department’s budget.
In other business at the Nov. 5 meeting, the council:
• Appointed council member Phil Frawley to serve on Downtown Whitewater’s streetscape plan project committee. The group will soon embark on a plan to enhance the overall characteristics of the city’s downtown shopping district.
• Made two citizen appointments to boards and commissions. Tom Miller has been named to the Board of Zoning Appeals, and Bonnie Miller will serve on the city’s Ethics Committee.
