By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                Williston City Council members and their staff spent five hours Monday in the first major budget workshop of the year trying out a process requested by City Manager Jackie Gorman that introduced the council to four new department heads working for the city. Gorman herself is relatively new to her job as the city’s top administrator.

            Information Technology Director Aaron Mills, Human Resources Director Melisa Thompson, City Planner Laura Jones, and Public Works Director Jonathen Bishop were among the department heads required to present a mission statement for their department and a list of their budget needs for fiscal year 2021-22, which begins Oct. 1 and runs through Sept. 30 next year.

            Gorman manages the city for the council and told council members she wanted her new hires as well as the old hands to get accustomed to developing a mission statement, crunching the numbers for their department, and making presentations to the council in a workshop to start the budget process.

             The usual procedure in the past was for the city’s financial analyst, Steven Bloom, to sit down with department heads and ask them in private meetings what they needed for the coming fiscal year, and later he would present the budget information to the council. This year it took two hours for department heads to complete their presentations before Bloom took center stage to discuss the overall budget.

            “A lot of people are new. She wanted all of them to be familiar with their area. The best way to do that was not only to prepare a mission statement – they all gave a mission statement for their department – they gave us comparable salaries for similar positions in other cities of similar size and made a presentation of what their needs are for next year,” said Council President Debra Jones. “It took two hours for every department to do that, and that was something we were not used to and then we took a break for supper, and then we went back to the budget and Steven Bloom led that. We learned a lot from them and they learned a lot from airing it out for us, especially the new ones.”

            The council postponed a decision on setting the tentative millage rate for next year. Three council members wanted one millage rate and two others wanted a different millage. The required process is to set the maximum tax rate, which is tentative, and the board can go down from there on the millage, but not up. Two public hearings will take place to tentatively adopt a budget and then finalize it.

            “I guess when we get ready to vote we’ll be deciding. We’ll see if anyone can sway anybody else to the other side,” Jones said.

            Gorman asked all her department heads to research job positions in their departments and compare wages to other cities of similar size to ensure among other things the city stays apace of voter-approved changes in the minimum wage. The minimum wage will increase to $15 per hour over the next five years.

            “With the state doing the raise up to $15 an hour and having to bring everybody up over the next few years, we want to make sure everyone was in the right class and so we’ve done a lot of looking at job descriptions and putting people in the right pay class and sometimes bringing their salaries up to what is comparable with other cities of our size. They did all of that,” Jones said.

            Williston has one advantage over other municipalities. The city operates its own electric utility. The city buys electricity from a wholesaler and resells it to customers. Over the years, the city has used surplus money collected from electric customers to keep the millage rate as low as possible. The city often siphons in the neighborhood of $600,000 from the electric utility to use for general budget operations.

             Using Gorman’s new budget workshop procedures, the city learned from its electric utility managers that the utility needed one more line crew to meet state regulations. The council is likely to approve the additional crew during the budget process and hire the new employees after the first of the year.

            Williston operates a city electric utility and natural gas utility as well as the standard sewer and water utilities.

            “You’ve heard me say many times that our forefathers thought about those things and preserved them for us. Without them, all we would have is water and sewer like everyone else, but the people who did the electric utility and put in the natural gas, they had a vision most cities rarely see. That’s how we pay for our police and fire because we have that. We just have to maintain the lines and keep it running,” Jones said.

            Jones said Gorman is doing a good job and has had to sort through some things to get the city running smoothly. She will be evaluated by the council in the near future. Two of the measuring sticks the council uses to gauge the effectiveness of a city manager is how well they handle the budget and supervise employees. The council was criticized by its auditor for overspending in some parts of its budget for the year that ended on Sept. 30, 2020, before Gorman took over as city manager. Gorman is the former city planner. Laura Jones trained under her and took over as city planner when Gorman was hired for the chief administrator’s job.

            Other employees who are relatively new to their jobs, in addition to Mills, Thompson, Laura Jones, Bishop and Gorman include Public Works Supervisor Donald Barber who holds state licenses to operate the city’s water and sewer utilities. Williston Municipal Airport Supervisor Benton Stegall could be considered relatively new to the job. He hasn’t been there a long time. The city has the largest airport for a city of its size anywhere in the region and boasts of a thriving industrial park attached to the airport. Stegall manages both.

            There are lots of fresh faces in Williston City Hall but they appear to be doing a good job. The city is just getting started on assembling a budget for next year. The city is required to adopt a balanced budget. The new department heads will continue to receive a warm embrace as long as they run their departments well going into the new fiscal year.

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City of Williston Budget Meeting July 19. 2021; Posted July 23, 2021