The High Springs City Commission unanimously voted on Thursday to take pay cuts on top of raising taxes and utility rates to address impending deficits in the city’s 2025-26 fiscal year budget.
Faced with a $723,000 deficit for its sewer ($620,000) and fire department ($103,000), the commission weighed multiple scenarios to cut services and increase revenue, including a millage increase, no staff raises, reducing fire department staff or eliminating the fire department altogether.
The commission ultimately chose to keep the city running as is, with an estimated $402 in fees to residents. The cost includes a $24.25 per month increase to sewer fees, a $27 fire assessment fee and a quarter percent, or $75, increase in the millage rate.
After the 25% pay cut for officials, the city would save around $14,200 annually.
Commissioners currently making $927 per month, or $11,124 per year, would drop to around $8,343 per year. The mayor’s $1,030 per month, $12,360 per year, would drop to $9,270 after the cut.
Although the fire and sewer deficits are covered with the new increase, staff said the solution isn’t permanent. The city’s water, solid waste and negative sewer enterprise funds would continue subsidizing its general fund reserves at unhealthy amounts and the local option gas tax would still not fund roads.
They said that unless it chooses the only long-term solution of eliminating the fire department, the city will need to discuss the same problems in its budget and raise rates again next year.
“There’s no good decision,” said High Springs’ finance director Diane Wilson. “We have a responsibility to have a stable financial picture. We don’t right now if we just keep doing one year at a time. If we went to a rating agency right now, it wouldn’t even rate us. We don’t have any money in the bank, and we’re in a negative position in sewer. That is not a healthy financial environment.”
Although cutting the fire department would have a positive financial impact long-term, staff said High Springs would lose control of its fire services to the county and residents would pay more for the county’s fire assessment rates.
Commissioner Katherine Weitz also said the large number of residents who showed up to the previous meeting to voice that they’d rather pay more taxes than lose services spoke volumes and made cutting the department non-negotiable.
Vice Mayor Andrew Miller originally moved to combine multiple budget options, including no raises and reduced fire department staff.
But the motion died after the commission agreed they didn’t want anybody to lose their jobs, make anyone quit their job for higher wages elsewhere, or fall out of best safety practices by sending fewer firemen or police officers on shifts.
Commissioner Wayne Bloodsworth Jr. made the motion to go with the tax increase, which passed with the 25% reduction in commission pay tacked on by Weitz.
In discussing how the city had gotten in such a poor financial condition, Mayor Tristan Grunder said a decade of stunted growth kick-started the problems. He said the county’s proposed $188,000 cut in mutual fire service aid added to it.
Grunder said during his time as a lead negotiator for city and first responder contracts, he’d never seen an entity pull back on terms like the county had with High Springs.
“If we knew back then that the county was going to do what they did, we could have prepared better,” he said. “In my opinion, what they did was dirty as hell. We wouldn’t be in this situation right now, as far into this situation.”
Grunder said he wanted to meet with the Alachua County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) to discuss the issue. But Weitz, who already emailed the county this month about the proposed cuts, said she attended the BOCC’s regular meeting that week to request a meeting, which was denied.
Grunder directed City Attorney Kiersten Ballou to instead draft a letter for the commissioners to sign and send to the county expressing their concerns about the cuts. High Springs’ current contract with the county for mutual fire aid ends Sept. 30.
“I think they need to know that what they’re doing is greatly affecting what we’re doing,” he said. “If you ask me, I think [Alachua County Fire Rescue Chief Harold Theus] is trying to buy our fire department at a bargain deal. So this is a bad-faith negotiation.”