New employees could be added to City of Darlington budget
By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
During a budget worksession May 21, Darlington City Council discussed budgets for several departments including street and sanitation and planning. They also discussed some challenges that those departments are facing as their employees age.
Before diving into the numbers, Karen Carroll with Street and Sanitation talked about some improvements that have been made since last budget season.
“The Street Department would like to thank Mr. Garland and council for purchasing our new equipment since our last budget meeting,” Carroll said. “The department has the two cost effective cherry pickers and the two garbage trucks that has absolutely saved on maintenance and, ironically, tires.”
Carroll said that their heavy equipment needs are being met but smaller purchases were also needed.
“Our equipment needs are improving day-by-day but we still need to update our pickup fleet,” Carroll said. “We just purchased two pickups; one is a 2008 and the other is a 1999. Buying used pickup trucks can go either way; you can either get a great vehicle or a great lemon.”
Several city workers are out on leave for medical issues, Carroll said.
“We are running with the minimum slotted employees and have begun to use a temp service to complement our employees,” Carrroll said. “We have one garbage truck driver out for an extended period of time; one garbage truck driver is also out. How long is to be determined; we haven’t gotten the results on him yet. A grass crew worker is on chair duty; that length is to be determined.”
“Those are the types of challenges that we have had over the years,” City Manager Howard Garland said. “Someone will get better and come back (but) they’ve been out for half a year. Another one goes out and doesn’t come back because they haven’t recovered from surgery. Some of the other departments we have, a lot of those folks are aging out. It is hard to find folks who want to work outside. If we hire them in the fall, they’ll stay sometimes. In the summer time it is hard to find someone to work in grass crew or tree crew. We really have some dedicated people who do those jobs.”
One of the biggest changes in the Street and Sanitation budget is in salaries.
“Salaries have gone up because we are putting the person who is going to operate the vacuum truck on there; so there is an extra salary there,” Carroll said. “Retirement has also gone up because of that.”
Another salary increase in the 2018-2019 budget is in the Planning Department.
“We are planning a new employee who will be someone who can work on the right of ways and the medians,” said City Manager Howard Garland.
“It will be a beautification person who will work full-time to make sure that medians are kept looking good and that things are being planted and taken care of properly in places such as the rose garden or the median near Mitchell-Josey Funeral Home. We are planning this person to work in City Planner Lisa Rock’s department and they will be supervised by the Darlington Garden Club. The garden club has been looking after these entranceways and the right of ways for so many years now that they know what needs to be done so they are going to help us develop the job description and a list of responsibilities that this person will have on a day-to-day basis.”
Rock also discussed a new mobile app during her budget presentation that will help city workers identify problems around the city.
“This mobile and online app will allow residents to report things, take a picture of it where they are and send you the information of where there is an issue, whether it is a pothole, a tree down, trash on the side of the road,” Rock said. “Through the software, you set it up, the correct department will get that message. Once that problem has been taken care of, the city worker can send a message saying the problem is fixed.”