THE CITY BUDGET VIDEO! – FY2026

It’s that wonderful time of year again! In this video, we break down the Moscow City Budget for FY2026 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:

It’s that wonderful time again folks! Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. 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. 

Today, 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 simple. The budget summary for FY2025 is 323 pages long and the budget document for FY2026 is 350 pages long, which is 27 pages longer than last year.

Now, you might think that reading through over 650 pages of budget sheets in order to make comparisons would be a tedious task… and you would be right! That said, this is the most critical piece of paperwork the city interacts with every year, and it would be unwise for any engaged citizen of Moscow not to examine it in full to the best of their ability.

Each year, the budget opens with a 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.

The opening letters year by year are pretty similar to each other. That makes it easy to look at them side by side and make comparisons.

In FY2025, the city passed a budget of $133,145,026. For FY2026, the city is looking at a budget total of $139,530,049. This is a $6,385,023 or roughly 4.6% increase from 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. I’d recommend you get yourself some coffee and settle in for the ride.

First up, finding an alternative water supply for the city. In 2025, the city allocated $80k for the pursuit and development of plans for an alternate water supply, plus an additional $182,500 for developing a 10% engineering design for a permanent alternative supply. For FY2026, the city has allocated $330,000 for its Alternative Supply Study, with the Idaho Water Resource board contributing $182,500 and the Palouse Basin Aquifer Committee contributing $153,341 in funding to develop that same 10% engineering design.

Next, Fire and EMS. In 2025, the city allocated $50k to fund hiring 3 full-time paramedic and firefighter positions. In 2026, they are continuing to fund those positions, with additional funding for stipends to fund coverage during holidays and summer breaks, when there may be staff shortages.

Next, replacing the emergency communications system. In 2025, the funding was not specified in the opening letter, but the city was focused on the completion of the new radio system. In 2026, the opening letter similarly does not specify funding, but describes it as the “remaining amount” for the new radio system, indicating that the city looks to be closing this item up by the end of the coming fiscal year.

Number four, the city shop. $5,291,174 was allocated last year to construct a new shop facility. This year, $3,397,577 is being allocated to complete the construction of the new shop facility, as well as to complete renovations to the existing city shop.

Number five, insufficient staff. In 2025, the city increased its family medical insurance premiums by 5% — from 55% to 60% — and added a 4% cost of living increase to its salaries. This year, that same insurance premium increase — now from 60% to 65% —and cost of living increase of 4% are on the table.

Roadway improvements. In 2025, the city was 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, some Mountain View Road improvements, and the South Main Pedestrian Underpass Project. For 2026, they’re looking at $3,057,400 in funding for projects including the city’s surface treatment program, as well as similar improvements to Mountain View Road and the South Main Underpass Project. This is an increase of $446,342 from last year.

Lastly, the Downtown Streetscape project. In 2025, the city focused on incremental changes to the downtown streetscape, piece by piece In 2026, the budget includes $250,000 to fund designs for targeted roadway improvements, including an “event safety barricade system.”

Double lastly, affordable housing concerns. I say “double lastly” because while this was listed as a budget priority in FY2025, it does not appear in the opening letter for FY2026. This is likely because the city has used up the remaining $50,000 in ARPA funding which was a part of the City’s Affordable Homeownership Opportunity Grant. With the funding used up, it no longer appears as a separate budget priority.

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 2025, 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 $7,568,502.

For 2026, the mayor’s letter states that inflation has remained an issue, with an emphasis on how difficult it has become for the city to provide competitive wages for its employees. The city is taking again the statutory 3% property tax increase plus the additional 1% of the forgone balance. The proposed property tax levy is $7,972,281.

Alright, time to get up and stretch, maybe do some jumping jacks, and let’s get into the structure of the budget documents.

I could choose to go through each minute detail with you, but we filmed the city council doing that last week, and the meeting was well over 4 hours long. Instead, this will be an outline of the budget document structure so that you can be more prepared to navigate it when you go through it yourself. 

For FY2026, we start on page 6, 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 12. By page 14, 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 FY2026 property tax amount of $9,019,281. Of this amount, the General Fund portion to fund general governmental services is $8,089,463 (including the State of Idaho personal property replacement funding), while $1,047,000 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 increased by 2.4% from $20,126,428 in FY2025 to $20,619,425 in FY2026.

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 FY2026 budget. Additionally, for FY2026, the Administration Executive Assistant position previously shared between Administration and the Arts Department has been eliminated, and the duties have been distributed to other existing staff members.”

We then get a breakdown of city property taxes on page 20 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 350-page budget document.

We’re just about finished here, but I’d like to put some of my own thoughts on the table.  The short version is that the city budget for the coming year is following a similar trajectory to last year, and looking at the details, there are some slight shifts taking place related to staffing, legislative constraints, and completed or soon-to-be-completed projects.  

That said, we are talking about a nearly $140 million budget for a town of just over 25,000 people. That sounds jarring no matter how you spell it out. Consider the city Coeur d’Alene, whose population is around 56,000 people, and whose budget last fiscal year was about the same as Moscow’s is planned for this coming fiscal year: the same amount of money, but one town has twice the number of people in it.

Now, obviously the two cities have different needs, different dynamics, different expenditures, different outside pressures. Comparisons of that sort remain nonetheless, and it would be unsurprising to me if someone looked at that and was concerned about a possible lack of fiscal responsibility in Moscow city government.

How could the city of Moscow address such concerns? I’d argue that changes could be made to allow greater public access and community interaction when it comes to the budget process itself.

While the proposed budget documents become available in the summer each year, the process actually begins as early as February, as department heads and city staff submit their individual budget requests to the city’s finance department. I would simply ask the city if there were any way that this early budget request process could be made into a series of public meetings of some sort. It seems to me that this would allow for a greater degree of public notice and awareness of these crucial preliminary meetings, and hopefully boost engagement. On top of that, an increase in the dialogue between city staff and the public could allow for a better mutual understanding of city financial decisions. 

Maybe I’m a little optimistic as to what’s possible, but it seems to me that both an engaged and interested public and a transparent and outreach-focused city government are necessary for goals like the yearly budget to be justly achieved. This is just my two cents as regards a way to possibly encourage both the public and the city in the right direction.

Now that I’m off my soap box, I hope that this video makes navigating the budget document a little easier for you. 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 4th, 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. And as always, if you have any questions, please reach out. I’m Aiden Anderson with the Moscow Minutes. See you next time.