Crescent town board looks at employee wages, capital improvements during budget workshop

The Crescent town board last Thursday held a budget workshop, which started with concerns over the wages of town employees.

“One of the first things I wanted to do when building this budget was to talk about wages,” said town board chair Grady Hartman. “I figured, we want to take care of our guys first and then work on a budget after.” Board members were in agreement that it was important to retain the two employees of the town road crew and to compensate them fairly based on the prevailing wage in the area.

It had come to Hartman’s attention that both of the employees on the road crew were under the county wage schedule he reviewed. Hartman wanted to review this discrepancy. Not only had he looked at the Oneida County pay schedule, but also at the Newbold pay schedule. With all of this in mind, the board made the preliminary recommendation to increase the wages of both of the employees on the town road crew.

“Just so you’re aware, with those changes, we have a deficit in our budget of $24,000,” said town clerk Tracy Hartman. The board acknowledged they may have to make adjustments elsewhere in the budget, but all agreed that these changes needed to be made.

Grady Hartman said his main goal with the meeting was to get the wages taken care of for the road crew. Once that had been preliminarily established, he said, the board could take some time before the next budget meeting to take a deeper look at the rest of the town budget.

The town buildings were another area at which the board looked during the budget meeting. Hartman said there were also several requests for capital equipment and he had talked with a contractor regarding the flat rubber portion of the roof, which would need to be addressed next year. 

“Do we at some point need to look at updating that shop?” board member Jonathan Jacobson said. There were several issues, including a lack of insulation after 10-12 feet on the walls and the floor drain was not sufficient in size. Hartman said a wood boiler had been installed there, but the crew did not like it, so it was not maintained, meaning it was no longer usable. The in-floor heat also was not operable in the addition. The crew told him the building would not heat up enough to dry everything out when they brought the truck in.

Jacobson said the building also needed gutters. Currently there were no gutters, meaning any water from the roof would run down the side of the building, rather than be moved away from the building. The board also discussed insulating the building on the outside with Styrofoam insulation, which would have to be considered before installing any gutter system. Jacobson said between getting the in floor heat working and insulation, it would go a long way towards helping the conditions in the shop. The decision was made to set aside $35,000 for the work. 

Tracy Hartman said there was approximately $50,000 available for capital improvements for 2026. Grady Hartman said he felt the other items on his list could wait, but they would want to look at the mulcher head for the tractor and the truck with a dump box once the loan on the highway truck was paid off in 2028, if the current board members were still on the board. At that time, Grady Hartman said, it might be a good time to look at doing some capital borrowing for those other capital improvements needs. 

Grady Hartman told Jacobson the budget for roads was $201,000, which was the budget for last year, plus $28,000 of L-RIP money that was to be used for Airport Road originally, but the town thought they may be able to move those funds to another project. He said L-RIP funding needed to be applied for by Oct. 23, so there was a little time yet. He said he was looking into crack sealing, chip sealing and fog sealing to see what the costs associated with each were. This sort of work could add life to the towns roads.

Jacobson said he had some preliminary thoughts as well as ideas regarding who to contact to get some better information on costs associated with the road work he was thinking about. He said he was not prepared to talk about a full plan yet for a road budget, but would be bringing that back to the next budget meeting. Once he had costs in place, the board could look at the Whistler ratings and make better determinations as to the best use of the available funds for roads. 

The next budget meeting for the Town of Crescent will be at 3 p.m. on Thursday, Oct 16.

Beckie Gaskill may be reached via email at [email protected].