WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — Warner Robins city leadership is getting down to crunching their numbers. Thursday evening, the city held their first public hearing to discuss their 2024 budget with the public.
The exact number has not been set, and Mayor LaRhonda Patrick says it won't be until their final deadline, but it will be larger than last year's $143 million budget.
"I feel very comfortable where we are financially as a city, but as a city financially, but as far as different initiatives and things we want to accomplish Fiscal Year 2024, some of those numbers are not yet fully determined," says Patrick.
Mayor Patrick says this year's focus, like year last year's, is on city employees.
"Council and I have the top priority in making sure we are able to give raises to our employees to be able to handle that increased cost of living here in Warner Robins," says Patrick.
Last year, the budget included a 10% wage increase for all employees.
"We thought it did a lot, but it didn't," says Patrick.
This year, salary increase will be individualized. Patrick says she wants to put salaries where they need to be to be competitive against other cities.
"There's no standard increase percentage across the board. It's more of what's the target salary, what's the target hourly rate for the various positions, which makes this process a lot longer and harder than we would've wanted," says Patrick.
On top of that, the other challenge is revenue.
"We have not gotten a major increase when it comes to the income for city," says Patrick.
Right now, they are still crunching the numbers and looking for things to cut.
When it comes to property taxes, Patrick says, "At the end of the day, until we check every corner and see how much we have available to give our personnel increases, I cannot guarantee what our millage rate will do this fiscal year."
Patrick says she does not plan to increase the rate at this time.
She says one thing is guaranteed.
"When the final budget is here, you should see a significant increase when it comes to the salary lines of our city." says Patrick
The next public hearing will be June 14 at 11:30 a.m. in the City Hall building.