SALISBURY — The Salisbury City Council continued its work on the budget for the upcoming fiscal year before the regularly-scheduled meeting on Tuesday, with city administrators answering questions that the council members raised during the budget presentation last week.

The first answer provided came from Assistant City Manager Kelly Baker, who showed how much federal funding the city has and how much of it could potentially be at risk in the near future. In total, the city of Salisbury has approximately $46.9 million in federal grant funding either budgeted or expected, although $22.5 million of that is in the already-recalled FEMA Building Resilience in Communities grant, leaving the city with approximately $24.3 million in federal funding.

“(Federal funding being recalled) could have a potential impact of over $24 million on our budget, if that were to happen. We don’t anticipate that that will happen, but back to the word of the day, there still is uncertainty. That’s why we’ve had a conservative approach to the budget,” said Baker.

The city already has $11.3 million in federal funding committed to the budget, with the largest being $5.75 in Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement funding, granted to assist in the multi-modal depot project.

That leaves the city with approximately $13 million in funding that could be considered at risk, with the largest being approximately $7.4 million for the Main Street Streetscape project.

Baker also noted that the largest impact of changing federal policies could be coming next year. President Donald Trump’s budget plans to completely eliminate the Community Development Block Grant and HOME Investment Partnership programs. The proposed budget includes $516,758 from both programs.

The city is looking into alternative funding sources, whether state grants or different federal grants, to replace the $22.5 million intended to fund the relocation of the Salisbury-Rowan Utilities Yadkin River pump station.

The update also provided information on the requested and recommended new firefighter positions.

The budget includes six firefighters and a fire inspector, but the six firefighters are funded in the budget through a FEMA Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant, with no backup plan to provide those positions. Mayor Pro Tem Harry McLaughlin asked if administrative and budget staff could provide options for funding those positions without the grant as well as provide an idea of the city’s chances of receiving the grant.

The need for staffing has been raised multiple times by members of the Salisbury Professional Firefighters Union raised the alarm over the amount of overtime that is being required to staff the department. The money bears that out, as the Salisbury Fire Department is expected to spent $812,000 in overtime costs, an increase of approximately $250,000 over the prior year. The department is only scheduled for an expected $335,000 in annual overtime costs.

“The other thing, and you’ve heard this concern from some of the firefighters that come in front of this board, is overtime. When you see $800,000 of overtime, that is a concern. Other cities use different schedules than the city of Salisbury, looks at different types of service, that looks at different types of hours and it looks at different staffing needs. Maybe some of these require additional staffing to reduce that overtime. I think there’s definitely opportunities for us to look at different service models and different schedules,” said City Manager Jim Greene Jr.

Greene floated several ideas for changing the city’s service model, including moving to a model that utilizes smaller trucks and only two medics for medical-only calls rather than a full fire apparatus and three firefighters.

Fire Chief Bob Parnell said that his confidence that Salisbury would receive the SAFER grant had grown exponentially recently, as he had been worried “the grant was not even going to open” just the previous week. FEMA officially opened the grant process for applications on Friday and will keep it open through July 3. Budget Manager Tracey Keyes said the city could expect to receive a response on the application by August or September.

Parnell did ask that the fire department be allowed to continue its overhire program if the city is chosen for SAFER funding. The program has allowed the department to effectively hire six nonbudgeted firefighter positions, filling spots where the department is missing manpower due to military leave, sick leave or other reasons. The overhire program has been extended through the end of the 2025-2026 fiscal year, June 30, 2026,

Greene’s presentation of other options for funding the six positions included two options, a tax increase or cutting other recommended new positions.

The six positions are projected at a total cost of approximately $500,000, which includes training, built-in overtime and equipment. Each cent on the tax rate equals $453,000 in revenue for the city, so Greene said the city could raise the rate 1.1 cents and fund the positions.

The other option was to cut other new positions created in the department, including any combination of two new police officers, a fire inspector, an ombudsman, senior development specialist, senior engineer and recreation programmer. Those positions total approximately $660,000 in projected expenditures.

During the meeting, Baker also provided an update on the Main Street Streetscape project, which will rework the roads, sidewalks and landscaping of downtown. That means that areas of Main Street through downtown will be shut down for significant periods of time.

Baler said that initial estimates for the project have come in over the city’s grant funding amount, so the city “is taking longer to get through this than we anticipated initially.” The next step will be bringing the plan to the City Council, which Baker estimated will happen in the summer. The project should open for bids in the fall, she said.

Towards the end of the discussion, Council Member David Post re-raised his concerns about the city’s projected budget reduction, saying that “when we’re looking at a four or five percent cut in the budget, we’re looking at a four or five percent cut in the services we provide.” Post said that maybe the council should look at a small raise in taxes this year.

“We will have to catch this up at some point in time. I know this is an election year, and so it’s a lot easier to say ‘oh, let’s not have a tax increase,’ but I really think we need to look at what the real impact is on the service cut,” said Post.

He asked the departments to come up with a way to quantify “what we’re actually going to be losing by virtue of inflation plus the (sales) tax decrease” and bring that before the City Council in the future. Greene said that they would work on pulling something together to present.

No decisions were made at the budget discussion, but the City Council did agree to hold off on any more budget workshops until after the public is given a chance to voice their concerns and thoughts at the public hearing on June 3.