City Council Reviews Proposed 2012 Budget

In its final meeting before the Christmas holiday, the Cumming City Council reviewed the city's 2012 proposed budget of $24,684,100, which reflects about a $1.5 million increase over last year.

The proposed general fund budget is $10,642,100 and the Water and Sewer fund is $13,042,000. The increase over last year's budget is due mainly to the opening of the which has a proposed budget of $1,131,750.

Mayor H. Ford Gravitt said he hopes to have the final budget approved in January after what he called some "minor tweaking."

Gravitt said Cumming is in better financial shape than many cities throughout the United States which have suffered during the current recession.

"I understand there's 600 U.S. cities that are bankrupt," he said. "Hard times and bad management. We can say the is not one of them and won't be one of them because we don't have any debt. We pay as we go."

City staff has worked on the proposed budget for the past three months.

"The good thing about working on our budget proposal is that we don't have to set aside a portion of the money to pay for bonds," said Gravitt. "We don't have any bonds to service in the city of Cumming so we don't owe anything."

In other business, council approved the annexation of Ventura Park and also approved a proposal for $17,950 to have Marc Satterfield and Joe Losurdo design and develop the city's Web site. The work is being done to unify and enhance the current Web site which was developed by individual departments.

Council also approved a bid from Bonded Systems, LLC of Kennesaw in the amount of $24,770 to provide lightning protection at the aquatic center and agreed to continue it's Pension Plan coverage with the Georgia Municipal Association.