Farragut budgets 265K for equipment replacement
As Farragut Board of Mayor and Aldermen continues its budget process, it reviewed its budgets for the Town’s equipment replacement, state street aid, Americans with Disabilities Act capital projects and insurance funds during a workshop Thursday, March 26.
“Our equipment replacement fund is a 10-year funding mechanism that we do to look at all of our major equipment throughout Town — vehicles, our big equipment like dump trucks, bulldozers, backhoes, mowers and the units that go with those,” Town administrator David Smoak said.
“We try to look ahead at replacements of those units in the future, make sure we have enough money in the fund balance to pay for those,” he said.
Focusing on fiscal year 2027, Smoak said the main revenues coming from or into the equipment fund are from interest earnings based on the fund balance the Town has, proceeds from sales of equipment and transfers from the general fund.
“We have a lot of proceeds [from sales],” he said. “We have a lot of equipment that we recently surplused that will go to gov.deals.”
“In the general fund, we’re just putting money aside and [then] put it into the equipment fund, so we can make sure we have enough for future expenditures,” Smoak said. “This year, we are going to transfer $235,000 from the general fund into the equipment replacement fund,” he said. “We’ve got major expenditures of $265,000, and so when you add up all those things, we have right at $16,000 in revenue over expenditures planned with an ending fund balance right around $1.3 million.
Smoak said the Town will need to replace a John Deere utility tractor, which is used daily and will be a $50,000 replacement unit; a 1575 mower with an additional cab, which is heated and cooled, estimated to cost $50,000 to replace; and a dump truck, estimated to replace at $160,000.
“We replaced one dump truck this year,” he said. “This is the second one we have. We’re going to a newer unit.”
“I know we’re going to get some questions, and if there is a competitive Kubota product, you might can answer that,” Mayor Ron Williams questioned Smoak.
“I know we do state contracts for a lot of these items,” Smoak replied. “I don’t know if (Kubota) is on the contract or not.”
Regarding the tourism/visitors fund, which receives revenues through the Hotel/Motel Room Occupancy Tax; event ticket sales and fees; museum and gift shop revenues; grant funding, which is going away at the end of this fiscal year; and interest earnings, “we have a beginning fund balance right at $923,476,” he said.
The proposed budget shows anticipated revenue from the tax of $557,000 for 2026.
Meanwhile, for 2026, the Town expects the following expenditures: tourism personnel, $200,584; operating costs, $736,792; museum personnel, $40,918; and museum operating costs, $41,061.
For two years in a row, “we’ve been spending a large part of our tourism fund balance down for the wayfinding project [signs],” Smoak said. “We also have a stage we have planned for next year.
“We project $418,000 next year in major equipment to do those two things,” he added.
“We had the Bassmasters restaurant in Town,” Williams said. “They were really impressed with the overhead street signs that were lit on Kingston Pike.”
Smoak said the state street aid fund is from where the Town’s major repaving projects are funded each year.
“We’ve got revenues projected next year right at $928,000 that comes from the state Gasoline and Motor Fuel Tax,” he said. There also are interest earnings added to that for a total revenue of “just over $1 million.”
Smoak added $1.9 million is planned to resurface about 14 lane miles.
Also, Smoak said Public Works is planning to purchase a striping machine to stripe lanes and parking lots, pavement assessment technology and steel plates, used to cover holes in the road.
