A Review of the Moscow City Budget – FY2027

It’s budget season! In this video, we break down the Moscow City Budget for FY2027 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. 

This document is one of  the most critical pieces of paperwork the city interacts with every year, and so any engaged citizen of Moscow ought to take some time to examine it in full to the best of their ability.

Let’s start simple. The budget summary for FY2026 is 350 pages long and the budget document for FY2027 is 317 pages long, which is 33 pages shorter than last year.

In FY2026, the city passed a budget of $139,530,049. For FY2027, the city is looking at a budget total of $149,292,804. This is an increase of $9,762,755 or roughly 7% from last year.

At the beginning of the budget document is a letter from the mayor, explaining the budget and some of the thought process going into making it. Here, the Mayor has highlighted a key point regarding how the budget is calculated, and it’s helpful for knowing how to read the budget each year. Let’s take a look at the letter itself:

“Several years ago, the City decided to budget these capital accumulations rather than only budgeting the fiscal year’s actual capital expenditures in order to increase fiscal transparency and present the City’s total finances in a single location. These capital accumulations total $74 million across the Water Capital, Sewer Capital, Storm Capital, Sanitation Capital, Fleet Fund, Information Systems Fund, and Capital Projects funds. Additionally, due to the City’s fund structures, there are several internal transfers totaling $14 million that are effectively counted twice: once when received as revenue and again when reflected as revenue in the receiving fund. Excluding these fund balances and internal transfers, the City’s total FY2027 budget would be $61,027,353.”

So in short, the budget includes a bunch of sums of money that aren’t necessarily part of the money being spent this year, but are counted as part of the money the city has. The actual amount of money that the city plans to spend this coming fiscal year is that $61 million figure, and their additional transfers and existing fund balances push that figure up to just under $150 million.

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.

The first one mentioned is the city shop. Last year, the budget included $3,397,577 for construction work on the City Shop facility. The FY2027 budget includes $785,250 to complete construction of the new City Shop facility and necessary renovations to the existing City Shop.

Next, staff recruitment issues – Last year, medical insurance premiums for staff were increased from 60% to 65% —and staff also received a cost of living increase of 4%. This year, the proposed budget includes a 2% cost-of-living increase and an increase in family medical insurance premium coverage from 65% to 70%.

Now for roadway improvements. In 2026, the city was  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 year, the proposed budget includes $1,355,945 for roadway improvements, including the City’s Surface Treatment Program, the Taylor Avenue Surface Restoration Project, the South 95 Pathway Project, and the South Couplet Pedestrian Improvement Project.

Lastly, the Downtown Streetscape. In 2026, the budget included $250,000 to fund designs for targeted roadway improvements, including an “event safety barricade system.” This year, the proposed budget includes $200,000 to fund the design of targeted downtown improvements.

Now if you’ve watched our reports before, you’ll notice these budget priorities differ from previous years. For example, work on an alternative water supply and EMS issues are not emphasized at all in the opening letter.

This is partially due to the fact that certain projects prioritized in last year’s budget were completed. When it comes to the water supply issue, the city discussed the subject at their budget workshop earlier this month, indicating that projects which they funded previously are currently underway, and thus there is no need to consider those projects as new priorities needing funding. That said, it would appear that the budget this year includes $202,250 for water conservation, PBAC support, and the ongoing study agreement which was set into motion last year.

That about sums up the budget priorities. Next, the opening letter goes through the extenuating circumstances in which the budget was formed. The mayor notes how heavy inflation has impacted the costs of city services and limited the buying power of city employees with the city’s limited ability to increase salaries.

With this 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 remaining $15,141 of the forgone balance. The proposed property tax levy, including that remaining forgone balance is $9,456,295.

Alright, let’s get into the structure of the budget documents.

We here at Moscow Report filmed the city council discussing the whole of the budget over the course of 5 hours last week.We’re not gonna do that again in this video. 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 FY2027, 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 expenditures like the city general fund. 

Here’s a quote: 

“Expenditures budgeted in the General Fund, including operating transfers, have increased by 2.54% from $20,689,006 in FY2026 to $21,214,099 in FY2027. 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. In FY2026, the City also eliminated two additional positions, including one patrol officer and the Administration Executive Assistant position previously shared between Administration and the Arts Department. The FY2027 budget continues to maintain these staff reductions due to a lack of available funding.”

One other fund to take a look at would be capital projects. The FY2027 budget is looking at a number of key projects including street maintenance, sewer main repairs, and the East City Park stage. The total for those is looking to be 17,358,500, which is down from $20,885,010 last year.

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 317-page budget document.

How is the city feeling about the budget this year? Based on the report given by Bill Belknap at the city budget workshop this past week, the city of Moscow is in something of a financial survival mode. The conditions at the national and state level are simply not good for the city to be taking on too many additional projects, and the services which they wish to sustain are costing more. This is reflected in the increase in benefits for city staff, while simultaneously not hiring for additional staff positions.

You can also see elements of the city’s financial tightness reflected in how they are budgeting for city commissions. If you watch their discussion on the subject, the city council seems far more reluctant to grant their commissions significant degrees of funding, even when such funding is based on precedent, compared to previous years.

Now, one might ask, if the city is so financially restricted, then why are they expanding their budget from last year? Again, if you take the city at their word, this has to do more with increased costs for providing existing services and funding existing operations rather than expanding to include anything extra.

Should the city be doing more to cut costs and reduce services in order to put themselves in a better financial position? That’s a question to ask the council directly.

In my mind, regardless of the amount spent, 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.

Now that we’re reaching the end, I hope that this video makes navigating the budget document a little bit easier for you. This document is by far one of the biggest decisions the city 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 17th, 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.