Meridian’s roughly $256 million budget will head into a public hearing after several work sessions to settle on a budget that hikes property taxes and foregone tax revenue that went unspent in previous years.
Meridian Mayor Robert Simison has been up front about his intention to request a full three percent increase plus the additional one percent forgeone, mentioning it in his State of the City address last month. Simison said a large part of the budget increase was due to the city’s Idaho Counties Risk Management Premium going up by $67,597. Additionally, the city saw its obligation to the Public Employee Retirement System of Idaho go up by a total of $860,800.
Taking the foregone property taxes will also to help make up for a budget gap coming in FY 2027 created by grant funding for additional firefighters coming to an end, as BoiseDev previously reported.
What’s changed since June?
Earlier versions of the budget requested eight new full-time employees for the police, legal, and public works departments, funding for a new community center, and various tenant improvements and remodel projects for city hall.
The council decided during a July 16 workshop meeting to leave in the full-time employee requests. It lowered the community center funding from $750,000 to $350,000. And the remodel project proposals saw an overhaul led by Council Vice President Liz Strader.
Strader and several other council members voiced concern that the remodel projects were a “Band-Aid” approach and they wanted something more thought out. Instead, the council decided on a split vote to allocate $100,000 into this year’s budget for a space study to be done at city hall. Additionally, in next year’s budget $6,000 would be given to Human Resources for badge access doors, and up to $300,000 would be budgeted for for immediate remodel needs of the highest priority.
Additionally, in its quest to save money, the council cut previously funded programs, including the Navigate wellness platform, HR interns’ life skills program, and the neighborhood grant program. Strader said the council and staff should spend the next month looking for other ways to save money in the budget so the city can get out of the firefighter grant hole as fast as possible.
Council President Luke Cavener agreed that looking for ways to save money should be the approach the council takes, but he would like to do it for the purpose of not having to take the forgone property tax increase.
Moyle weighs in
Over the weekend, an opinion piece penned by Idaho Speaker of the House Mike Moyle ran in the Idaho Statesman, ripping Simision for the proposed budget increase. Moyle told BoiseDev that he was tired of cities blaming their budgeting issues on his H.B. 389, which caps how much local governments can get from new construction and annexation in taxes for budget growth.
Simison had said in his State of the City address that H.B. 389 has cost Meridian $1.4 million a year and has made “the long-held mantra” of growth paying for growth “more of a challenge today than ever.”
But Moyle called this assertion, and ones other cities have made about the effects of the bill, “a bunch of bull manure.”
“I’m getting tired of these local governments blaming the legislature for their bad behavior on their budgets and blaming the legislature when they’re raising everybody’s property taxes,” Moyle told BoiseDev. “Robert’s stuffing on those poor people living in Meridian — and I hope you put that in your article, because he is — he’s stuffing it down their throats. And there’s no reason for him to raise property taxes right now with inflation as bad as it is. He needs to tighten his budget and belt like the rest of us are.”
Moyle said the property tax increases cities are proposing are not the legislature’s fault because the legislature does not collect or spend property taxes.
On Tuesday, Simison maintained that the increase was due to increased PERSI and ICRPM costs and the firefighter dilemma.
“We’ve had very fiscally prudent budgets the last four years, at least from my perspective, and this is helping address issues came after last year’s budget process,” Simison said.
Council action and a chance for feedback
All council members voted in favor of the proposed budget with the three percent increase, but Cavener and council member Doug Taylor voted against the motion to take the forgone 1%. council member John Overton said voting for the foregone was not something he’d ever think he would do.
“If you would have asked me last year if I would be voting in favor of taking the forgone I would have said ‘absolutely not,’” Overton said. “I’ve never seen a year come up like this year.”
Overton said it would have been very easy for him to vote against the foregone based “on principle” but he didn’t want to see anything affect Meridian’s public safety or other services.
Cavener said during Tuesday’s meeting that the budget is not the mayor’s, nor is it the city council’s, but it’s a collaboration between the mayor, staff, and the council, and the citizens will be able to voice if they accept it as their budget or not.
The public is invited to weigh in on August 20. After the hearing, the council will have time to consider feedback and make final changes before appropriating the budget in September. More details about the proposed budget can be found here.