Ronnie Boggs
Lexington approved its budget for the 2025 fiscal year at $646,740, which includes a $118,803 increase.
A large portion of the budget is dedicated to water services, which cost the city roughly $389,000. The budget, however, remains balanced.
“A lot of towns use the water department as a source of income for the cities,” acting Mayor Ronnie Boggs said. “We’re pretty much, what comes in, goes out. We don’t make much money on that, which probably something in the future we might need to look at.”
Maintaining water systems alone costs $110,000, a $35,000 increase from last year in capital expenditures, which is largely funded by a $100,000 grant from the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority.
“That can be anything from rebuilding the well house to filters for the wells, like, I said, keeping the city water system going is very expensive,” Boggs said. “We're dealing with uranium because there's so much granite in this area, uranium builds up in your water. You have to buy filters to filter it out. Same thing for water. You have to keep all the proper chemicals in the water.”
The city increased its revenue from sewage fees by $20,000, a 64% increase, which caused a stir last summer when water and sewage rates initially increased.
This year’s budget also sets aside $22,000 more than last year for streets, totaling around $57,000.
“The project we’ve got coming up for this coming year is paving from Upson and Church (roads) down to (Lexington) Baptist church. Now that doesn’t seem like a long way, but a project like that can cost $40,000-50,000,” Boggs said. “We’ve saved up for several years to pave such a length.”
The city will spend $70,000 on contracted labor and services, largely due to the city attorney with legal fees surrounding the downtown Lexington buildings.
Boggs said the unsung hero of the budget process is city clerk Kim Bradford, who sees all of the bills and knows the amounts to increase or decrease each year.
“Every small town has one extremely important person. It’s not the mayor, it’s not the city council. It’s the city clerk,” Boggs said. “If you don’t have a good, strong city clerk, you can get yourself in trouble. Lexington is very lucky to have Kim Bradford.”