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Planning department requests modest increase, flags street-light accounting and blight/demo funding needs
Summary
Interim planning director Vaughn Essen told city council the department seeks a roughly 15% increase for matching grants, urged an energy audit after discovering street-light charges in planning’s account, and said the city needs more demolition funding even as code-enforcement staffing has increased.
Vaughn Essen, interim director of Planning and Development, told the Jackson City Council that the department’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget reflects a roughly 15% increase intended mainly to provide matching funds for grants, particularly for JTRAN and site-development work to grow the Northwest Industrial Park. Essen also raised a separate accounting issue: a sizable street-light expense line appears under Planning’s budget and should be audited.
Essen said Planning has 97 positions (including one part-time) with 11 vacancies and that the requested increase is primarily to match external grants such as those pursued by JTRAN. He proposed investing in site-development grant matches to support industrial-park growth and said economic-development staff are pursuing Mississippi Development Authority funding for that purpose.
On street lighting, Essen reported a historical charge running to millions and a line item that seemed out of place in Planning’s accounts; he asked for an energy audit to map lights, verify which lights are operating and search for cost savings. Council members said Entergy and state regulators should be engaged; the director said a proper energy audit and a mapped inventory of lights would inform further action and might reveal savings through LED conversions and elimination of phantom accounts.
Essen updated the council on housing and blight programs: the city’s CDBG allocation has fallen to about $1.7 million from roughly $3 million in earlier years, he said, and the department is negotiating a voluntary grant reduction to resolve constraints tied to the HUD Section 108 loan (to free up ability to develop). He said the Office of Housing and Community Development coordinates CDBG, ESG and HOME funds and that the planning division has increased code-enforcement staffing to nine officers plus managers to address blight. Essen and councilmembers agreed that demolition funding is the next bottleneck: code officers can cite properties but actual demolition requires demolition appropriations and remediation resources.
Essen said rental registration work will be reorganized to the housing office to better align HUD-funded programs with rental oversight. Councilmembers asked for a clearer line of sight on CDBG allocations across departments so the council can avoid overcommitments; Essen said the HUD entitlement allocation and other HUD programs are limited and must be prioritized.
Ending: The planning director asked the council to authorize an energy audit for street lights, supported additional demolition appropriations to address residential and commercial blight, and said he will return with grant-match plans and an updated staffing/organization plan for rental registration and housing-related functions; no formal votes were recorded during the hearing.
