By Logan Wells, News Director | Logan@kymnradio.net
While the City of Northfield’s Budget and Tax Levy for next year has already been approved, this doesn’t mark the end of the budgeting process, as the City Council and Staff will prepare in January and February to implement a 5-Year Budgeting plan. While the City currently plans some parts of the budget 2 years out, City Administrator Ben Martig stated that this change would help the City better anticipate what tax increases would be needed:
“Related to those other operational pieces of the city, like you talked about, the non-utility funds, so streets, parks, libraries, or administrative service levels. So you can not only look at utility bill planning, but you can look at what’s the city’s plan over five years for all of the city funds is really where we want to be.” – Ben Martig, Northfield City Administrator on KYMN In The Morning
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Martig noted that 5-year budget planning is already done for the city’s utility funds. The system works by identifying which projects and operational changes will be needed over the next 5 years. From there, they conduct a rate study to phase in rate increases to avoid a sharp one-year increase:
“Our utility funds are a five-year rate plan that’s in place So if you want to know today what our utility rates are projected for the next five years, we have a plan that’s been developed and is pretty solid that we are recommending. Now that can change if something happens.” – Ben Martig, Northfield City Administrator, on KYMN In The Morning
While long-term planning already exists with the city’s utility funds, Martig noted the general fund would present its own unique challenges, stating that predicting Public Safety or Library needs 5 years out can be more difficult but that it was something to strive for. At their last meeting in December, several City Council members expressed optimism about the plan and working towards long-term planning. Here’s Mayor Erica Zweifel on KYMN:
“We asked for some different things throughout the year, different looks at the budget, different looks at the Capital Improvement Plan, we made a very intentional effort asking for some different budget modeling. And so while we didn’t get to all of that modeling this year, and so we made a very intentional to set the goal of getting that to those specific types of modeling things next year to do some more long-term budgeting.” – Erica Zweifel, Northfield Mayor, KYMN News Interview
The City Council will take up the issue in its work session meeting in either January or February.
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