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Vienna City Council approves budget revision

By Tyler Bennett 4 min read

VIENNA -- The Vienna City Council approved a revision on the 2021-2022 general fund budget and continued its discussion on water and sewer projects as part of it regular meeting Thursday evening.

Having the first revision of the general fund budget, the Vienna Police Department needed additional funds for the subscription of a software program called tip411.

Tip411 is a web-based toolset that features innovative smartphone apps, anonymous text tips, group alerting, and secure social media publishing tools. It helps agencies engage community members of all ages by enabling anyone with a cell phone to submit tips via a smartphone app or text anonymous tips that can be responded to in real-time by authorized personnel in the agency or organization.

Vienna Police Chief Mike Pifer said the app will be free for residents to use and will help inform the department of crimes in progress or other tips while being anonymous.

"It's a way for them to send in tips on any crime that we would put up on there, it's also a way for them to send it anonymously," Pifer said. "We usually get responses through Facebook Messenger because we post on Facebook. Many of those people are concerned with their anonymity, sending it that way. This solution would not only allow us to receive tips but we can also put out push notifications and send out alerts."

Pifer also said tip411 can not only be used by the police department but can also be used by multiple departments like the fire and emergency medical services as well.

The revised budget will now be $6,400, increasing $5,400 from the current budget.

Council continued discussion of the possibilities of using the first half of the American Rescue Plan money that the city has received, leading to talks about potentially increasing the water and sewer rates in the city to help cover the cost of projects in the water and sewage departments. Equipment and material prices have gone up due to inflation, making it harder for the city to keep up with replacing out-of-date equipment.

City Recorder Melissa Elam said raising rates may not make residents happy at first, but if they see work being done in repairing much-needed water and sewer lines and paving of the roads in the city firsthand, then most would understand the raise.

"As a citizen myself, if my rate is going up a little bit every other year or whatever it is, but I see public works out there repairing, replacing, and working on a regular basis, I know my money is doing what it's supposed to," Elam said. "But if we eventually get to a place where 'Oh no, we've got stuff back up in people's houses' and 'We've got water lines breaking all the time,' I have a problem with that."

Councilmember Kim Williams was in favor of giving the department $2.6 million for projects and using funds from the capital reserves to cover the cost of other projects. She said they can use some of roughly around $7.5 million in the reserves to pay for the projects as that reserve has increased nearly $4 million since April 2019.

"If we use the $2.6 (million) for water and sewer, we get the most bang for our buck out of it. But if you start taking money out of the American Rescue Plan and put it in the general fund," Williams said. "Every dollar that you take out of the bucket that you can use for water and sewer, it's going to cost you more money, and you're going to have to raise water and sewer fees."

Council, minus member Tom Azinger, approved three additional bids on the agenda: approval of salt/deicer bid from Cargill for $88.12/ton delivered; paving of various streets from Brown Asphalt for $734,181; and new safety surface for the large playground piece from Davis Athletics for $18,850.

Tyler Bennett can be reached at tbennett@newsandsentinel.com

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