THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 15, 1996 TAG: 9605150385
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
The City Council on Tuesday approved an operating budget for next year that gives a boost to public safety.
By a 9-0 vote, the council approved a $428 million operating budget which called for hiring 20 firefighters - up from the nine that originally had been included in the budget.
The 11 additional positions will cost $364,133 and be funded temporarily next year with money that had been earmarked for city operations that increase in cost, such as employee salaries.
The budget contains no tax or user fee increases.
The council had discussed hiring 44 firefighters over the next three years to better staff local fire companies.
Firefighters had asked for that number after a March blaze took the lives of two Chesapeake firefighters. Firefighters told the council that a lack of manpower contributed to the two deaths.
But at the end of Tuesday's meeting, there was little indication that the council was willing to pay for the remaining 24 requested positions.
Adding those firefighters would likely require Chesapeake residents to pay additional user's fees or taxes after July 1997, according to city budget director Claude A. Wright.
A number of options are being discussed, including a cellular phone tax, increasing the charge for using the city's emergency 911 phone number and creating a cable television utility tax.
The fire department was not alone in receiving a boost. In addition, the council used $100,000 from its own contingency fund to hire three additional police officers. The police department had requested 47 new positions.
The council also appropriated $1.5 million to give a 3.7 percent merit pay raise to city and school employees; $175,000 to fund Tidewater Regional Transit's bus service in Chesapeake, and $75,000 for computers at the Chesapeake campus of Tidewater Community College.
The council, on a 5-4 vote, delayed for a month spending $1.1 million on a computerized mapping system until the staff studies the needs of the fire department.
KEYWORDS: CHESAPEAKE CITY BUDGET by CNB