The topic of the “Mornings unPHILtered” show was all about Statesboro's budget problems and the recent actions taken to begin balancing the budget. The show's guest was City Councilman Travis Chance, who came on the show to give his perspective on the matter.
    Show host Phil Boyum asked Chance about his background and how he originally decided to run for council in District 5. Chance said he is originally from Millen but came to the city to attend Georgia Southern and decided to stay after graduating. He said in mid-2007 several local business owners — some in the downtown area — told him they thought he would make a good councilman and asked him to run, which led him to qualify for the election.
    Asked about public safety restructuring and the termination/early retirements of police officers and firefighters, Chance said at the last annual budget retreat, the city council discussed how to overcome some of the “mistakes” that had been made by previous administrations. Though Chance said he felt previous councils “did what they felt was right at the time,” he said at the budget retreat the city faced the issue of inflating salaries coupled with shrinking revenues.
    “We have been fighting to overcome these deficits since (fall of 2007),” Chance said.
    The councilman said the mayor and other councilmen discussed several options with City Manager Shane Haynes at the retreat to balance the budget, and made what they thought was the best choice. By restructuring the fire and police departments and reducing the personnel, he said the council felt they could make a serious dent in the budget shortfall.
    “Instead of passing the burden on to our citizens, we just wanted to consolidate our department … to restructure our departments to basically give more service for basically the same or less money,” Chance said.
    Knowing that the city's personnel costs were growing so dramatically, Boyum asked why not just ask those employees to take pay cuts. Chance said that wouldn't be fair by any imagination and that it wasn't those employees’ fault. It seemed to Chance that the past city administration just hadn't considered what would happen if their collections of fees and other monies began to decline while cost of living and merit raises continued to push up salaries.
    Boyum said, looking back, that the previous spending of “emergency” funds to balance the budget and pay off the police station may not have been the best decision for the city since it left the city’s reserves so decimated. Chance said in the past the city may have been “too optimistic” about replenishing the depleted emergency fund with ever increasing revenues. However, he said the current council cannot “play armchair quarterback and say what we would have done,” and added that, “we just got to say ‘where do we stand now and how do we make the transition?’”
    A caller stated that when the city was “making money hand over fist,” the council should have reduced property taxes instead of giving the city employees big raises. He reminded Chance and Boyum that when these employees retire the city will be paying for all those raises once again. Chance stepped in to say at that time, before he was on the council, the city was not putting money aside for a rainy day but was making improvements to buildings and increasing services that the council then felt needed attention at that time.
    Desperate times called for desperate measures, Chance said, and consolidation and restructuring of city departments seemed to be the best way to overcome the budget deficit quickly. The caller said he did not have a problem with the council’s restructuring of the public safety department, and, even though the decision may seem kind of harsh to the long-term employees, he favored any streamlining of local government.
    Moving onto another subject, they discussed the near-completion of the Downtown Statesboro Streetscape Project and how the city has been paying for the improvements. Chance said that hopefully the project will be done by July 1 and that he wanted to clear up the misconception that the city is paying for the streetscape project out of the city’s general fund.
    Chance said a Georgia infrastructure grant, obtained about six years ago by former Mayor Bill Hatcher and former City Manager George Wood, paid for a large portion of the project and funds from the special purchase, local option sales tax (SPLOST) paid for the rest. He added that the SPLOST monies were already allocated to the streetscape project, so they could not be redirected for other city purposes.
   
    “Mornings unPHILtered” airs live Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. on statesboroherald.com and also simulcast on WWNS-AM 1240 on the radio. You also can listen anytime at BoroLive.com on statesboroherald.com