Town getting updated cost, revenue study
The Nashville Town Council has decided to spend up to $6,500 of economic development income tax money to update its 3- to 5-year financial plan.
Umbaugh & Associates is doing the work. Town Manager Scott Rudd said the plan would project expenses and year-end balances for the utilities and all other departments.
“Last year, particularly, a lot of things changed with how the state did the budgeting process, so it was very helpful to me and to Brenda and the rest of the staff,” he said about the town’s last Umbaugh financial plan.
An update would be especially helpful this year because the town is facing “significant legal expenses,” he said. For more than a year, the town has been locked in a federal lawsuit with Brown County Water Utility.
More revenue could be coming into the water department now that new meters should be installed, he said. Other changes to that department, such as pressure-reducing valves and other water delivery parts being replaced, could affect the department’s revenue, he said.
The original financial study cost about $15,000, he said. This update will cost less than half of that.
Nashville Clerk-Treasurer Brenda Young said that considering the state’s new rules for internal controls, having an outside agency come in and look at the town’s books every couple years would be a good thing.
The council voted 5-0 to do the study.
Water line expansion project update given
Freeman Ridge Road residents will get a new road surface after the water line expansion project along it is finished. Utility Coordinator Sean Cassiday said that road deterioration from the large work trucks was “a lot more than expected”; however, restoring the road was in the company’s contract. “They’ve just got to figure out how they’re going to do it,” he said.
Another part of the ongoing water project was replacing all the meters throughout the Nashville Utilities system. Cassiday said that installing the new, radio-read ones has drastically cut down on the amount of time it takes staff to drive around and take readings. It took two-and-a-half hours to read them when it would have taken four days and five people under the old system, he said. “And we had to backtrack twice because roads were being worked on,” he said. “I’m fully convinced we can do the whole system in an hour and a half.”
