The City of Green River may have a new finance director, but employees and residents won’t have to learn a new name.
Chris Meats officially took over the city’s finance director’s position, which was previously held by Jeff Nieters. For the past 14 years, Meats acted as the city’s accounting supervisor.
Meats’ accounting career began with the Big Five Company in Denver. From there, he moved to Casper and worked for a regional accounting firm. Before that, Meats obtained a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Wyoming and is a Certified Public Accountant.
After four years in Casper, Meats and his wife were expecting their first child. Since his wife was from the Rock Springs area, they decided to return to the area she grew up.
That was 14 years ago.
“I’ve worked with Jeff for the past few years,” Meats said. “The city’s been good to me over the last years and I have no intention of looking for anything else.”
Meats was already familiar with how the city’s budget works and how to work with the departments to come up with a budget.
Meats said he decided to apply for the position, because he felt like it would be a nice change and it was something he felt comfortable doing at this time.
This change will require Meats to oversee more than just the accounting portion. He will now have to oversee the accounting, information technology, and city clerk’s office.
He will also need to maintain the city’s official budget records and be in charge of keeping the IT department up and running.
“Of course I will be a part of the budgeting process,” Meats said.
With the Green River City Council scheduled to approve the budget next week, Meats is working hard to make sure all the numbers are finalized.
Earlier this week, Meats was reviewing the budget and taking care of last-minute changes.
As for presenting the budget in front of the Council, Meats was not too concerned.
“I’ve done it a couple of times before,” Meats said. “The most nervous part is we are in a time where revenues are erratic for the next one to two years.”
He said the city will have to compromise on what it can continue to support for the next couple of years.
Meats said this year’s budget is looking about the same as last years, with about $12 to $15 million. Of that, between 70 and 75 percent is going to employee salaries.
Although this past week is crunch time, most of the work was already started in January and February. Before anything is presented to the council, Meats and Nieters met with all of the department’s supervisors to review their budgets.
The budget has been looked at numerous times and department supervisors have been met with two to three times to review the requests. When there is an area that needs to be cut, the department heads work together to see where those adjustments can be made. The department supervisors are good at helping each other out on what projects need to be completed and what can wait.
“They do a good job of doing that and working together,” Meats said. “Ultimately, regardless of department head or administration wants, it’s up to the Council.”
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