MISSOULA — Missoula is moving to a priority-based budget for Fiscal Year 2025 which is different from previous budgets as a structural defect is looming over the city's finances.
Each city department presents its budgets to the council in the spring, outlining an inventory of every program in their departments, laying out what they need to maintain their services and new requests for this budget.
With revenue shortfalls and growing expenses, Mayor Andrea Davis and the Missoula City Council knew this year's budget would be tight.
Mayor Davis is proposing a budget that would raise taxes by 5.84% — without the emergency services levy. Those two combined would cause taxes to go up by around 11%.
"We have expenses and needs for the community that outpace revenue for our general fund. And so we had one-time ARPA — or federal dollars — being able to afford some of the things that were newly expanded needs," Davis said.
"We knew that those were going to taper off this year. And so I had asked our departments to look very carefully at everything in their budgets, making sure that they could decrease. Basically nipping around the edges where they could and being very, very realistic about what costs were going forward,” said Davis continued.
Davis says this budget is focused on continuing core services such as snow removal, road repair, and park maintenance. But officials are also looking at different ways to fund the city outside of raising taxes.
“This budget is about maintaining and paying for our core services. and we'll continue to figure out ways through either examining our core services and examining our, our level of service against our program inventories and, and priorities," Davis said.
"We have to take a look at legislative relief. Many cities around the state are doing the same thing and looking at diversity or different revenue sources,” Davis added.
Inflation costs have also impacted this budget cycle and have caused an increase in financial demand.
"So in fact, more so than just your average inflation that you see in the news because we pay for things like asphalt and tires for everything from fire trucks to police vehicles, to public works vehicles," Davis noted.
"Those items in and of themselves are at a much higher inflationary rate than the average inflation for the everyday consumer. So municipalities are actually impacted quite significantly and it continues to be a challenge. But one that we will continue to work hard on," Davis continued.
The final amendments and budget will be heard by the Missoula City Council on Monday, Aug. 19, 2024.
