Parkersburg City Council to vote on budget revisions

Money would go to cleanups, waterslide, pond rehab

PARKERSBURG -- Parkersburg City Council will consider budget revisions allocating the rest of the fund balance from the recently completed fiscal year at its regular meeting Tuesday.

It's one of only two items on the agenda for the meeting scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in council chambers on the second floor of the Municipal Building.

The current budget and some revisions set the fund balance from fiscal year 2022-23, which ended June 30, at $1,021,000. The proposed revisions reconcile previous-year purchase orders fulfilled after that date and allocate the remainder of the actual fund balance of $2,069,343.

The revisions, referred Thursday by the Finance Committee on a 3-0 vote with two members absent, direct $418,653 to the capital reserve fund.

A local match of $227,439 for a federal Land and Water Conservation grant to remediate the pond at either City or Southwood Park is the largest allocation.

"We can't apply without having some matching funds in place," Mayor Tom Joyce said.

It has yet to be determined which pond would be addressed first, although both need work, he said.

The revision would also set aside $45,000 for a specialty mower for the new Parkersburg Ohio River Trail, $33,000 for radio and extraction equipment for the Parkersburg Fire Department and an additional $11,000 for an LED sign to be installed at City Park after the bid came in over budget.

There will be $175,000 left unappropriated to go toward replacing the mechanical components at the Southwood Park water slide. The fiberglass slide itself was rehabilitated earlier this year.

"We think we've extended the useful life of the slide at Southwood Park, but those mechanicals are mostly original," Joyce said.

There would be $200,000 sent to the Urban Renewal Authority line item, which was largely depleted after the authority, consisting of all nine council members, voted in August to purchase the Economy Inn property on Seventh Street in an effort to address slum and blight.

"This is just replenishing a portion of that for them to take other actions," Finance Director Eric Jiles said.

Allocations of $100,000 each would be directed to the sanitation fund and efforts to clean up homeless encampments.

The money for sanitation will go into the unappropriated fund balance, where $316,000 was deposited in an end-of-fiscal-year budget revision with the idea of mitigating the need for future rate increases. Council approved a $2-a-month increase in sanitation fees for this fiscal year.

The budget already includes $78,000 for homeless encampment cleanup efforts. Joyce said the city has been granted rights of way to commence cleanups on three other properties, and the additional funding should cover those and more.

"I anticipate we'll keep doing it," he said. "That's been largely well received."

The only other item on council's agenda Tuesday is the final reading of an ordinance abandoning part of an unnamed alley north of 25th Street and east of Fairview Avenue.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.