Jamestown City Council will continue discussing the 2016 executive budget prior to their voting session tonight.

Starting at 6:30 p.m., council members are scheduled to talk about at least six different offices: clerk, treasurer, assessor, comptroller, information services and corporation counsel. These departments are led by Joseph Bellitto, comptroller; Mark Dean, information services director; Marilyn Fiore-Lehman, corporation counsel; Kevin Okerlund, assessor; and Jim Olson, clerk and financial services manager.

This will be the second opportunity for council members to listen and ask questions to department heads. On Oct. 19, budget deliberations started with Julia Ciesla-Hanley, city recreation coordinator, Jeffrey Lehman, public works director, and John Williams, parks manager. Ciesla-Hanley gave the budget report for youth services, the summer playground program, city recreation youth league baseball, concerts held at Allen Park during the summer and the historic markers program.

For Lehman and Williams, both discussed their concern about the amount of money budgeted in the 2016 executive budget to replace equipment and machinery. Both department heads talked about how they requested more money than they were given in the proposed budget to replace worn equipment.

”I’m just pointing out items of concern,” Lehman said as he went through his proposed department budget.

Lehman said the Public Works Department has a list of needed vehicles and equipment replacement that totals more than $4.6 million.

”We’re way behind on the natural turnover of equipment,” he said.

Lehman said the budget request he made was lower in the proposed budget for basic building maintenance services, janitorial services, traffic light and sign improvements and to replace a copy machine that is necessary to print engineering blueprints. Williams said his request for summer labor, playground maintenance and tree cutting safety equipment was less in the 2016 executive budget. He also said the need to replace a boom mower is a major concern for him next year.

On Oct. 7, Sam Teresi, Jamestown mayor, released the executive budget. The proposed spending plan has a tax levy increase of 5.6 percent, or $843,990. The tax rate proposal also has an increase of 5.6 percent, which would increase to $23.94 per $1,000 of assessed property value. As of now, the proposed budget would exceed the state’s tax cap, which means residential property taxpayers would not receive a rebate check for a property tax increase in 2016.

The budget deliberation process will continue with Jamestown City Council continuing to talk to department heads about their proposed budgets. By Dec. 1, council needs to approve a spending plan or the original executive budget goes into effect for the city’s fiscal year, which is Jan. 1 to Dec. 31.

In other council business, they will vote to amend the 2015 budget to pay for the city’s 10 percent share of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Assistance to Firefighters grant. The city will be using $4,863 from its contingency budget to help pay for rescue extrication equipment. According to FEMA’s website, the primary goal of the Assistance to Firefighters grant is to meet the firefighting and emergency response needs of fire departments and nonaffiliated emergency medical service organizations. Since 2001, the Assistance to Firefighters grant has helped firefighters and other first responders to obtain needed equipment, protective gear, emergency vehicles, training and other resources needed to protect the public and emergency personnel from fires and related hazards.