City officials met with department heads Tuesday in the second of three meetings to decide how to spend $9.2 million they have to use in fiscal year 2009.

The Carthage City Council's budget/ways and means committee will sift through $11.2 million in requests from the nearly two dozen city departments and organizations to decide what will be funded and what will not.

Monday's meeting consisted of requests from a variety of not-for-profit agencies that receive funding from the city to provide services to the city and residents.
On Tuesday, the committee met with city department heads to discuss their departmental requests.

A common theme running through all the requests was uncertainty over where the price of gasoline and diesel fuel will end up and how much to budget for in fiscal year 2009.

Most departments requested approximately the same amount of money as they did last year, but all said they had no idea how to budget for the price of fuel.

"Gasoline, that's a crap shoot," said Fire Chief John Cooper. "We have mostly diesel trucks and that's running $4 a gallon. We're doing pretty good this year, and basically we're going to try to get by on what we budgeted for this year."

Police Chief Greg Dagnan said his department has almost used up its fuel budget for 2008 with three months left in the fiscal year.

"We've already used 96 percent of the budget as of April and we've got three more monthly bills left this year," Dagnan said.

The fire department and parks and recreation had two of the larger new requests for the new fiscal year.

Cooper asked the committee to consider building a new fire substation on land near the intersection of Garrison Street and Airport Drive in Myers Park, at a cost of approximately $200,000.

Cooper said that cost could build the city a 40-foot-by-50-foot metal building with bays for two trucks and some room to grow.

He said the department would station a grass fire truck and a pumper at the station and staff it with two firefighters.

"We've got the new high school, Steadley Elementary, a new lumber yard, the Wal-Mart, Lowe's and other businesses moving out there," Cooper said. "With the hospital moving out to where they did, we need to be moving out that direction."

On the parks and recreation front, Director Alan Bull made two large requests, one for a purchase of new maintenance equipment for the golf course and another for the city to consider leasing and operating the privately owned driving range, just south of the parks and recreation headquarters.

Bull said the owner of the driving range, Dennis Detert, decided to retire this year and did not plan to open the driving range or the miniature golf course.

Bull said the driving range would be an asset to go with the nearby golf course and the city could lease it and operate it for a couple of years as it considers whether or not to buy the property and add it to the park.