Walhalla/Westminster Pass City Budgets

The city councils of both Westminster and Walhalla gave final approval to the cities’s 2016-2017 budgets this week, with neither city’s spending plan including a tax increase. Westminster residents, however, will have an opportunity under the city’s 2016-2017 budget to cut their electric power rate by 5 percent. The Walhalla city budget for general operations includes neither a tax hike nor an increase in water and sewer rates, according to Walhalla city administrator Nancy Goehle. The budget also includes no cost of living raises for city employees. The city operations budget was passed unanimously. The Westminster city budgets also passed second and final reading unanimously, said city clerk Jennifer Adams. Westminster city council members Charles Miller and Doug Williams were not present for the vote, however, according to Adams. The Westminster budget also includes no tax or fee hikes. The budget ordinance, however, creates the possibility for city residents to reduce their city power rates by 5 percent by signing on to a program to allow the city to regulate the customers’s power usage at certain times. Pushed by former city administrator Jeff Lord, the system, offered by Piedmont Municipal Power Agency (PMPA), attaches regulating equipment to the heating and air conditioning systems of power customers who volunteer to have the devices installed.

The Westminster council also announced that the municipal swimming pool would open Saturday. The city closed the pool in early 2013, and over recent months a combined initiative of the city and private citizens have undertaken to refurbish the pool to open for the 2016 season.