Salisbury budget headed to second reading

The proposal for Salisbury’s fiscal year 2017 budget is headed to a second reading, according to city officials.

During Monday night’s meeting, the floor was open for a public hearing.

Some aspects of 57 million budget includes a half-million dollars for downtown Salisbury plus about 361,000 dollars for youth programming such as community centers.

The city is also looking to increase water and sewer rates by two percent, starting this October.

Salisbury Mayor Jake Day says the most important thing is to get public input as early as possible.

According to Mayor Day, the council held public “goal setting” sessions this past winter to put the current proposal together.

“When it’s at the end, which is typical of government in allowing and encouraging that input to be at the end of the process, it’s usually in the form of unproductive commentary and fighting,” He tells 47ABC.

Mayor Day still encourages people to reach out the council by phone or email if they could not make it to Monday’s public hearing.

The budget is scheduled for a second reading on May 23.

The council also granted final approval for acquiring a light armored vehicle for city police Monday.

The vehicle was acquired by another agency in Howard County and can sustain rounds of certain rifles and handguns.

The vehicle gained unanimous support at a work session in April and was officially added on the Consent Agenda on Monday.