By Lee Weyhrich
CLAY — The city of Clay is facing yet another financial blow with the announcement that Winn-Dixie on Old Springville Road will be closing its doors on or before Nov. 19.
The last delivery was made to Winn-Dixie on Monday, and when the stock is gone, the store will sell fixtures and then close.
Winn-Dixie spokeswoman Della Barber called the decision to close the store “difficult.”
“It’s never easy to close stores,” Barber said. “It is just a necessary part of operating a retail business.”
Winn-Dixie accounts for roughly $250,000 in tax revenue for the city, and along with Publix and Piggly Wiggly, is among the largest single generators of sales tax revenue Clay has.
With this news came another round of drastic cuts from Clay’s already-reduced proposed budget.
The books, media and periodicals at the Clay Public Library have been reduced from $15,000 to $7,500. Clay schools will see a decrease in moneys from $110,000 to $78,000, meaning each of the three schools will receive roughly $10,000 less than it received last year.
The Public Safety budget has been reduced from ,000 to ,000, which is enough to maintain the current deputies as well as their equipment and expenses, but will keep the Clay City Council from being able to purchase traffic cameras or other upgrades.
There will also be a ,000 reduction in salary and wages for the city employee budget. This means that the council will be unable to hire any new employees and all existing employees will be unlikely to receive raises. The council was hoping to hire an additional employee at Public Works.
There will be no money going into any contingency funds, and the only road work that will be completed will be that which has already been approved, or that which can be paid for out of the 5,000 to 0,000 City Manager Ronnie Dixon expects receive in 4-, 5- and 7-cent gas taxes.
Even with these massive cuts the council would still have a ,375 deficit. To offset this, the council voted to take the education and public safety earmarks off the 2 percent sales tax increase that was approved in August 2013. By getting rid of the earmarks, the new budget will show a positive of roughly ,000, Dixon said.
The current .1 million budget, with the removal of the earmarks, was approved 4-1 with Councilman Ricky Baker voting against making any sudden decisions.
Along that line, Baker also requested an update on the “vicious dog” ordinance and its cost to the city. Baker suggested against passing any more controversial ordinances until the city has the funds to pay for the inevitable court battles.
“If there’s any more lawsuits dealing with ordinances, I say we don’t pass those ordinances,” Baker said.
Dissatisfaction with the council led one Clay resident, Marlin Joe Gilliland, to seek de-annexation from the city. Gilliland owns two properties on Brewer Lane.
“Y’all keep talking about budgets and price cuts and everything in the city,” Gilliland said. “If y’all looked at the way you spent money on yourselves — for transportation home and using city vehicles and everything — if y’all would cut corners there then us taxpayers wouldn’t get upset and want to de-annex.”
The council denied Gilliland’s petition. Two new properties were annexed into Clay, however, one on Mildred Ann Drive, and another on Carraway Street.
Gary Lloyd contributed to this story.