Amador County – Jackson City Manager Mike Daly last week gave the Jackson City Council an overview for the city’s coming fiscal year budget.

Daly said it was a quick synopsis and he plans to present the draft budget for consideration at the next council meeting.

Daly said the council expected to see a budget that comes in at a balanced level, and this year will probably go over just a little bit because of fuel cost impacts and other costs. The fiscal year is pretty close to targeted numbers.

The new city budget “will be folding in the costs” of operating with full time employees at the Jackson Fire Department, including the training, testing of equipment and the “things you begin to work with when you have full-time folks that are in tune with the National Fire Protection Authority.” NFPA establishes what fire departments do in terms of testing, training, and staffing.

Some of the increases will be in Measure M funding and quite a bit in the volunteer side. Daly said the city uses Measure M for salaries and benefits for full time firefighters, and pays for some volunteer support and incentives. Daly said Ione used its Measure M funds the first year to pay volunteers a stipend, and now has full-timers. Daly said most of Jackson’s money is focused on full-time pay and benefits.

Last week, the Jackson City Council also swore in a new full-time fire engineer, Jesse Digirlomo, a long-time volunteer for the department. Daly said he is the fifth full-time employee at the fire department.

Daly also went over capital improvement projects planned for the coming year, including bridge replacements at South Avenue, French Bar Road. The one-lane bridges are going to be replaced, and will go through environmental processing and pre-design this year. The Cal-Trans Pitt Street Bridge project will include initial survey work, and is about a year behind other two.

Another capital improvement is the expansion of the intersection of Court STreet and Highway 88. Bids were opened and should be awarded at the next meeting. Daly said the project should start in July, and the Federal Highway Safety Improvement program is awarded through Cal-Trans and provides 90% of the funding, with the other 10% coming from the Regional Traffic Mitigation Fee Program, run by Amador County Transportation Commission.

The project will realign the exit from Highway 88 to Court Street, and cut back the slope so the medical plaza people have better access. Daly said Court Street will be widened to allow both right and left turns off Court Street onto 88. It will also repave New York Ranch Road to the highway.

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.