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Clarksburg council approves budget revision amid questions about revenues and line items
Summary
The Clarksburg City Council approved a resolution revising the fiscal 2024–25 city budget but members pressed staff for explanations about revenue variances, decreased cable franchise fees, and apparent anomalies in fire-department salary figures.
The Clarksburg City Council voted to approve a resolution revising the city’s fiscal 2024–25 budget after discussion and questions from council members about specific revenue and expense line items.
Council members asked staff to clarify recent changes shown in the revision packet, including a roughly $135,000 increase tied to the 2% utility tax on natural gas, a $15,000 decrease in cell-phone franchise receipts and a $100,000 drop in cable-TV franchise fees. A council member suggested the cable-fee estimate should be lowered in the next revision given the ongoing shortfall.
Discussion also focused on the fire department: a member asked whether the recent fee increase for fire protection — approved in December and effective Jan. 1, 2025 — had raised collections; staff said revenue reporting has shifted to quarterly, producing timing differences. Council members additionally raised a calculation concern: one line showed an apparent $1 million reduction in the fire department’s “salary and wages” number, while Social Security/Medicare tax lines rose; staff said they would verify those figures and the methodology for overtime accounting.
Other items discussed in the manager’s and department reports included 81 building permits issued with a total job cost of about $2.5 million, $600,000 in business and occupation (B&O) tax receipts and just over $21,000 in hotel-tax receipts for the reporting period, and a fire-department response total of 265 calls in May and more than 2,000 police calls for service that month. Council also approved the first reading of an ordinance establishing salaries and compensation for municipal officers and employees for fiscal 2025–26; council recorded support for the staff-recommended cost-of-living adjustment.
Councilors asked staff to run follow-up reports on franchise-fee trends, utility-tax receipts and line-item calculations before the next formal budget revision; staff agreed to provide the requested details.
