By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

“Every year, we strive for a balanced budget, we want to continue to put money away in reserve — pay cash for our projects — and levy no more than 25 mills.”

Those are the objectives of the annual budget process for the city of Hays, according to City Manager Toby Dougherty.

“Those were all hit (for 2016),” Dougherty told city commissioners Thursday night during their work session.

He pointed out some things that are “a little bit different” in 2016.

All employees will be getting a wage increase of $2,050 each next year. Dougherty said it’s a strategy to reduce turnover in front-line employees who are being “cherry-picked” by other employers.

“We are seeing a little turnover and having a hard time competing in the market at a lot of our lower ranks,” he said. “Some of our direct competitors locally are matching our salaries, and sometimes beating our salaries. It’s hard for them to match on benefits but we’re getting beat on salary quite a bit.”

According to Dougherty, the budgeted money is a “3-percent salary increase that equates to $2,050 for each employee” with the exception of those who are capped out. No new, full-time employees will be hired during 2016.

More money will be spent in 2016 for street maintenance.

“In the General Fund, we’ve identified an extra $500,000 to be transferred to Special Highway to spend more on street maintenance. That’s something we worked on diligently,” Dougherty said.

Another change is in the Utilities Fund with the separation of the water and sewer funds as the city moves forward with a $30 million rebuild of the wastewater treatment plant.

“We have completely separated them (water, wastewater and water sales tax funds) knowing that we are going to have large capital expenditures in wastewater and large capital expenditures in water. We need to make sure we understand completely the revenues, the expenditures — the dollars coming in and the dollars going out,” Dougherty said. “Our capital expenditures have been co-mingled in the past, and we want to make sure that is all separated.”

The levy will remain at 25, the same as in 2015.

Dougherty said Ellis County has told the city to expect a 5 percent increase in its total valuation.