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WHEELING CITY MANAGER ROBERT HERRON

WHEELING — The city of Wheeling is expected to operate on a tighter fiscal ship moving forward as expenditures in some areas — including personnel — have inched slightly over budget.

City leaders have noted that budget season starts in January for planning purposes, as officials look ahead to the next fiscal year of 2025-26, which begins in July. While departments and employee groups within the city are scheduled to submit proposed budgets for the next fiscal year to the city manager’s office by the first week of February, City Manager Robert Herron indicated that a focus must be made to the current fiscal year’s expenditures to bring them in line with the budget.

“Expenditures have been running a little bit ahead of schedule,” Herron told members of the Finance Committee of Council during their most recent meeting.

While revenues have been fairly strong so far through the 2024-25 fiscal year, expenditures came in a couple of percentage points ahead of the budget late during the last calendar year.

“Personnel expenses in both police and fire are a little bit ahead, and of course, they are our most expensive departments,” Herron said, noting that the city administration was planning to have discussions with department heads regarding the budget.

“We’re going to have to keep a close eye on that, which we always do. But there’s going to be some discussions as to how we can slow the budget down a little bit. Because, like I said, we are a couple of percentage points over.”

One reason personnel expenses have been tighter has been the fact that the city and the Human Resources Department has been working to fill vacant positions.

Another related expense in the city that has been for employee health insurance, which increased slightly more than expected, Herron indicated.

“The health insurance increase is a little bit more than we had budgeted, so we’re going to have to take that into account as we go through the year, as well,” he explained. “But basically, we’re at a point where we’re almost at full employment, believe it or not. I don’t think we have any vacancies in Operations. We have a few in the police department, as we always do, and we’re filling positions in the fire department.”

Tight budget aside, filling vacancies in the city is always a step forward, the city manager noted.

“We’re very pleased with it, actually,” Herron said. “Our HR Department has done an excellent job of recruiting and filling the positions. Hopefully the fire department will be fully staffed here after the next set of applicants. I think there were 17 that passed the fire test. That will be sufficient enough to fill the fire department and then have a list left over. And then obviously, we’re constantly trying to fill the police department vacancies.”

Herron noted that some vacancies remain in the city, which has been without a finance director since Seth McIntyre stepped down from the position in 2023. Late last year, there were still six vacancies on the Wheeling Police Department’s roster.

“But we are working to finalize a very good police civil service list for filling those positions,” Herron noted, adding that across the rest of the table of organization, there were still about eight to 10 vacancies. “Which is low, but it happens as people retire and resign throughout the year, and it takes time to backfill.”

The hiring process includes going through lists of candidates and often waiting for pre-employment physicals and background checks to come back. But although the personnel costs are nearing maximum capacity, operating at full force is a good thing for the city, Herron noted.

“So we’re running full steam here, and we obviously need to make sure that we have sufficient funds to pay everybody, which we will,” he said. “But I think that’s part of what’s contributing to the fact that we are a little bit ahead on personnel.”

At the very beginning of the current fiscal year on July 1, full-time city employees received a 3% wage increase.

As for health insurance, the city had budgeted for a 9% increase this year, but the premiums increased by 11% — another small percentage that adds up across the board and will need to be accounted for, city officials said.