The Moscow City Budget – FY2025

It’s that wonderful time of year again! In this video, we break down the Moscow City Budget for FY2025 ahead of its coming public hearing. We’ll take you through the budget structure, as well as highlighting key features and changes, and making comparisons to last year’s budget.

Read the full transcript of the video below:

How’s it going y’all. Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. I’m wearing a suit and tie today, because it’s how you dress for a party like this. Every year, the Moscow City Council and city staff sit down and put together the city’s budget for the coming fiscal year. Next, they hold a public hearing for the budget to allow for public input, and then approve a final version. 

In this video, we’re gonna be walking through some of the details of this coming year’s budget, comparing it to how things were budgeted last year, and highlighting anything that stands out. 

Let’s start with something simple. The budget summary for FY2024 is 282 pages long and the budget document for FY2025  is 320 pages long, which is 38 pages longer.

When I initially asked a member of the council about the increase in length, they mentioned that this increase was likely due to formatting changes with the budget spreadsheets rather than anything dramatically changing with what the city is budgeting for this coming year. Having gone through each of the 602 pages of both budgets myself, I can say that this is more or less the case.

Next, we’ve got the opening letter from the mayor. This letter works to summarize the budget, explain any particular projects or issues that the city is focusing on with its finances, and any further reasoning for the budget being the way it is from the mayor’s perspective, alongside notes of appreciation for the council and the staff that made it all possible.

Interestingly, the opening letters for both the 2024 and 2025 budgets are pretty similar to each other. That makes it easy to look at them side by side and make comparisons.

In FY2024, the budget total was $120,747,285. For FY2025, the city is looking at a budget of $132,875,424, which is a $12,128,139 increase from the last year.

Next up, budget priorities. Each year, the Mayor highlights certain projects and issues that the city has decided to focus on with its finances going into the fiscal year. Buckle up ladies and gentlemen, this is gonna get hairy.

First up, finding an alternative water supply for the city. In 2024, the city allocated $80k in funding to continue pursuing plans for said water supply. In 2025, they have again allocated $80k for the same project, plus an additional $182,500 for developing a 10% engineering design for a permanent alternative supply.

Next, Fire and EMS. In 2024, the city allocated $50k to fund a study to stabilize EMS service delivery. For 2025, they are again looking at $50k, but are focusing on hiring 3 full-time paramedic and firefighter positions.

Next, replacing the emergency communications system. In 2024, the city budgeted $2,307,798 to fund construction of a replacement communications system. For 2025, the funding is not specified in the opening letter, but the city is focusing on the completion of the new radio system.

Number four, the City Shop. $286,000 was allocated in 2024 to design a new shop facility. In 2025, the city is planning to allocate $5,291,174 to construct a new shop facility.

Number five, insufficient staff. In 2024, the city increased its family medical insurance premiums from 50% to 55%, increased police lateral recruitment incentives, and sought funding for a salary survey for the city. In 2025, the city wants to up those same insurance premiums by another 5% – so from 55% to 60% – and add a 4% cost of living increase to its salaries.

Roadway improvements. The city allocated $2,273,760 in 2024 for roadway improvements including the continued surface treatment program, A Street reconstruction, design for future Mountain View improvements, and the South Main Pedestrian Underpass Project. In 2025, they’re looking at $2,611,058 in funding for projects including the Surface Treatment Program, the White Avenue Pavement Restoration Project, the Public Avenue Local Highway Safety Improvement Program project, some Mountain View Road improvements, and the South Main Pedestrian Underpass Project. This is an increase of $227,298 from last year.

The Downtown Streetscape project. In 2024, the city had just completed its streetscape study, and was working on a funding program. In 2025, the city would like to be working on incremental changes to the downtown streetscape, piece by piece.

Lastly, number eight, affordable housing concerns. The city allocated the remaining $110,000 of the $150,000 ARPA funding to the City’s Affordable Homeownership Opportunity Grant in 2024. They’d like to do the same this year, but the remaining amount has been reduced from $110k to $50k.

That about sums up the budget priorities. Next, the opening letter for both budgets goes through the extenuating circumstances in which the budgets were formed. In 2024, the mayor noted how heavy inflation had impacted the costs of city services and limited the buying power of city employees with the city’s limited ability to increase salaries. As a result, the council took the statutory 3% property tax increase plus the additional 1% of the forgone balance, putting the city’s property tax levy at $7,164,883. 

In 2025, the mayor’s letter states that inflation is still an issue, and the city is taking again the statutory 3% property tax increase plus the additional 1% of the forgone balance. No details on the planned property tax levy in this section of the 2025 budget, but later on, you can see that the planned property tax levy is $8,596,577.

That’s all kind of a lot, right? Well, if you need to get some water, use the restroom, do it now, because now we’re moving onto the actual structure of the budget documents. 

Now, I could walk y’all page by page through each infinitesimal detail of the budget, and we would probably all go insane in the attempt. So instead, I’m going to give you an outline of the budget document structure so that you can be more prepared to navigate it when you go through it yourself.

For FY2025, we start on page 7, which outlines the uses of the budget as a policy and management plan, as a financial plan, and as a communication device. We move on to pages detailing the organizational structure of the city, as well as its major funds.

These funds are split like so. First, we have governmental funds, specific to government operations and services. Second, we have proprietary funds, which are in turn split into enterprise and internal service funds. Enterprise funds are managed similar to private organizations, and include the funds for water, sewer, stormwater, and sanitation services. Internal service funds are allocations made to other city funds for cost reimbursements needed for city fleet maintenance and IT services.

We then get a look at the city’s budgeting process, calendar, and strategic plan starting on page 13. By page 15, we see a couple of the budget highlights. This is where the city has chosen to focus on revenues such as property taxes, and on revenue outflows like the city general fund. Here’s a quote from this section on all of that:

“The proposed budget includes a total FY2025 property tax amount of $8,596,577. Of this amount, the General Fund portion to fund general governmental services is $7,550,177 while $1,046,400 is allocated to the Debt Service Fund for scheduled debt service payment of the 2019 voter approved general obligation capital facilities (police station construction) 10-year bond.”

Next up, we get some of the highlights from the expenditure side of things. Here’s another quote:

“Expenditures budgeted in the General Fund, including operating transfers, have decreased from $21,031,935 in FY2024 to $20,082,877 in FY2025. This decrease is largely due to the City’s completion of the City’s $2.0 Million Pullman Moscow Airport Terminal Project local match contribution in FY2024.

“In response to financial challenges the City experienced in FY2024, the City eliminated six positions including two Patrol Officers, a Communications Manager, an Accountant II, an Arts Assistant, and a Parks Administrative Assistant position. These positions remain vacant and unfunded within the proposed FY2025 budget. For FY2025, the Administration Executive Assistant position will be shared equally between Administration and the Arts Department.”

With all that said and done, we then get a breakdown of city property taxes on page 21 followed by a summary of city revenues and expenditures. What follows in the document is a lengthy breakdown of the city’s budgeted funds. These funds are broken down by department, and include chart comparisons to last year’s budget combined with brief explanations of the changes and reallocations year-by-year. This section constitutes the majority of the 320-page budget document.

We’re almost done here. I have a few thoughts based on going through the budget myself, interacting with city leadership on the subject and paying attention to the city’s public budget workshops earlier this month [July 2024]. It seems clear that the city is feeling the pinch resulting from legislative changes at the state level, including a loss of some state funds and a smaller gas tax. Thus the city is not actually expanding its horizons overall, but is primarily staying the course from previous budget years, and is even in some ways contracting, even if the budget total is up over 12 million from last year. 

Examples of this include the staff vacancies they still haven’t filled and apparently don’t plan to fill based on the proposed budget, as well as the fact that the priorities for the proposed budget are not dramatically different from last year’s. On top of that, the city is aiming for the same property tax increases as last year, and while the property tax rates overall have actually decreased, the overall assessed values of properties have increased. 

In short, the city budget for the coming year is following a similar trajectory to last year, and looking at the details, this represents some ways in which the city’s spending is getting somewhat constrained and limited by external forces.  

Alright. Hopefully that makes navigating the budget document a little easier for you, if you so choose to go through it yourself — and I’d highly encourage you to do so. This document is by far one of the biggest decisions the council makes every year, and so citizens should make sure to have input on such a decision. As a reminder, the city is making choices as to how to spend your money, and so you ought to provide a say as to how that money is spent. The budget hearing will take place at the city meeting on August 5th, at City Hall at 7pm.

If you want to look at this document yourself, check out the Financial Documents page under the Government tab on the City of Moscow website. We’ll have a link posted with this video. 

Okay. Are we done? We’re done. Great. I’m gonna go lie down for a bit. As always, if you have any questions, please reach out. I’m Aiden Anderson with the Moscow Minutes. See you next time.