Our Producer Takes On the City Budget Hearing 

It’s all budgets this week, and our producer is not thrilled about it. Nevertheless, he does his best to report on the city budget hearing and the county budget workshops which took place this week. Let’s check it out!

Read the full transcript of the video below:

Look, I’m not thrilled about this either.

Alright, y’all. Producer here. Talent decided to skip town right after the Moscow city council passed the annual budget for FY2026. So now it’s up to me to tell you how it all went down. I got his notes on the meeting right here, and I’ll do my best not to sound like a swing shift nurse practitioner on the third monster of the night, watching a man clutching his posterior as he walks up to the urgent care doors.

The meeting kicked off with public comment, with one citizen voicing concerns about bike safety, and encouraging the city to increase their efforts in this area of focus. Another citizen, Gregory Soderberg, thanked the council for their work as government officials, and mentioned that his church has been consistently praying for them.

Next up, the public hearing for the FY2026 Annual Budget. Rather than rehash all the details of the budget here, which will drive me to crash my Corolla into the 1912 Center, I’ll just point to the video we made about it last month. If you want numbers, check that video out. But here’s what went down in the meeting.

City Administrator Bill Belknap outlined the purpose, process, and details of this coming year’s budget over the course of an hour. There were a couple details that stand out from his presentation that were new to anyone who had only previously read the budget draft documents or watched the city workshops.

For starters, the city has Emergency Communications listed as one of its strategic priorities, but it turns out they don’t need to fund it, because the project will be completed before the start of the next fiscal year. For another thing, the County Assessor’s office made an adjustment to the taxable valuation within the City, which basically means the city got a bump in their estimated property taxes. The total amount for those taxes is now $9,088,502. The total amount in the budget listed in the presentation was $139,578,442.

Public testimony was pretty brief, with Victoria Seever delivering a note of appreciation for this year’s budget and the work that city staff put into it. The council expressed similar notes of appreciation during their deliberation time, while also encouraging those citizens who might be opposed to the budget to participate in person at these public hearings going forward. Ultimately, the council voted to approve the budget unanimously.

The public hearing for the budget was followed by a public hearing for a fee resolution. According to Idaho Code, any new fees or fees that increase by more than 5% that the city charges for its services need to be approved via public hearing. The city always updates its fees when it puts a new budget together, so they decided to hold a public hearing for the fees in bulk, Costco-style.

I’ve only got a few major changes to mention. First up, Artwalk fees are going away, since the Chamber of Commerce is taking on that event. There’s new public records fees for nonresidents, such that anyone outside the city trying to print up hundreds of documents actually pays for every part of the process. Any of you true crime-podcast-investigative-journalist wannabes better get your checkbooks ready.

There’s also a new fee for euthanization order appeals. The rest is all increases: sewer tap fees increased 14% to match actual costs, construction flushing costs increased by 15%, disconnection fees increased, the parade fees description was clarified, and fees increased by 5%. Lastly tire disposal fees went up 37% due to sharp cost increases. 

Calling this a public hearing is a bit ironic because there was no public testimony, and almost no deliberation. The council simply voted unanimously to approve the fee resolution.

Next up, Bob Buvel of city staff presented on a change order for a project currently taking place in the alley West of Main Street. The city has been working on repairing the sewer line over there, but they found out that the storm line running parallel to it also needs a major overhaul. The change order allows them to add repairs to the stormline onto the list of objectives for the contractor working on the sewer. It seems that the contractor should be able to take care of the storm line in the same amount of time as they’ve already planned for the sewer line, and with no one interested in letting leaky pipes lie, the city council approved the change order unanimously. 

Lastly, Tyler Palmer of city staff presented an attempt to amend the city’s street banner policy. I say “attempt” because this proved to be a tricker decision than it seemed at first glance. The policy was last updated in 2013, and the new wording gives specific guidelines related to what light pole street banners can be used for. Specifically, the policy allows governmental entities like the city and the university to utilize the banners, but only permits outside groups to use them once they have been approved by the council.

As it turns out, a good number of the councilors took issue with this last bit. Sandra in particular expressed concerns about accusations of discrimination, should they find themselves approving the use of banners for one group and not another. While there was some back and forth discussion about this, the council ultimately voted to send the policy back to staff, to remove the language about outside groups, before making any further decisions to approve it or not.

Alright, so much for the city. The county also had some meetings this week, related to their own budgeting process. While the city’s presentations seemed all more down-pat, the county is definitely still in the “figuring things out” part of the process. 

As explained by County Clerk Julie Fry, if the county takes its current set of budget requests and tries to pay for it with its current revenues, it ends up being just under $1 million short of paying for everything, even with taxes raised to maximum. I know it’s the government we’re talking about, but that difference won’t do.

The commissioners are therefore busy trying to find ways to reduce the amounts in their budget based on recent requests, while still keeping employees salaries and benefits a priority, and making sure that major projects don’t get delayed more than they need to. When the final draft numbers come out for this budget, I’ll drag talent back in here and have him walk you through ‘em.

It’s actually interesting to watch the two governments do their budgeting side by side. On the one hand, the city seems to be very trusting of their process and staff; on the other hand, you don’t get to see the majority of that process as a member of the public. The county might seem a little more duct-taped together, but there seems to be a lot more explicit transparency when it comes to the actual formation of the budget documents. It’s the difference between seeing the spreadsheets being written, and seeing the powerpoint based on the same spreadsheets.

And either way, there’ll always be those people in the meeting looking at these and muttering “this could’ve been an email”.

So there ya have it folks. The city passed its budget and the county will soon have a budget to pass. We’ll keep you posted when the documents come out. As always, we’ll have the relevant links posted with this video, and if you have any questions, please reach out. I’m the producer with the Moscow Minutes, we’ll see you next time.

Alright, we’re done. Talent, you owe me. I feel like I need one of those Panera death lemonades right now.