Cookeville Budget Process Considers Department Needs And Potential City Projects

City of Cookeville has started budget review process for the 2022-2023 fiscal year.

City Manager James Mills said that department directors are currently working on their individual budgets. Mills said that when it comes to the process itself, he follows the same protocol the city has done for some 20 years which includes presentations from department heads.

“They’re the best ones to know what they need and to show us what they’ve spent for the past year and what things they anticipate costing next year,” Mills said. “So we let the individual departments do their individual budgets and then we meet with those department heads individually to go over what they believe they’re going to need for the coming year.”

Mills said that in addition to the budgets of individual departments, the city council will have major projects to consider. He said that list includes the aquatic center, water plant expansion, and road repairs.

Mills said that they are also going to have to address city employee health insurance and they want to explore increased employee pay. He said that much like many other cities and counties, the scene has increased greatly.

“And we’ve got to figure out how to best deal with that, this year was particularly high,” Mills said. “And another important part of this year’s budget is that we’re hopeful to continue our efforts to improve our employee pay. Over the past couple of years, we’ve had significant steps to improve our employees’ salaries. And that’s very important that we continue to do that to stay competitive. We’re seeing just like a lot of everybody else is, that it’s hard to find people to come to work now. We’re having difficulty with even getting people to apply for jobs, and part of that is our salaries. So we’re trying to work towards improving that.”