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Midvale Journal

Budget season ramping up for Midvale city council

Mar 22, 2021 04:27PM ● By Erin Dixon

By Erin Dixon | [email protected]

A city’s budget is its guide to spending. Midvale City, like most others, runs on a fiscal year system, from July 1 to June 30. 

Finance Director Kyle Maurer outlined the budget process to Midvale City Council in early February. 

  • “The first thing that I will do is set the base budget for the next fiscal year. That is the prior year budget less any one-time purchases.”
  • “The next thing I do is send budget sheets to the departments and I ask them to start preparing any budget requests that they need; if costs go up and bring those to a meeting in February.”
  • “Then I compile information from external rate studies. For example, we’re doing the water study right now.”
  • “We will prioritize requests and we will be doing the retreat with the council. We will work with you on prioritizing which projects or increases you would like to fund.”
  • “From there, Finance in conjunction with the City Manager, will present the recommended budget to you as the city council in May. That’s the tentative budget. That’s also when we do a public hearing.”

The council must approve a budget by the end of June. 

What are the highest priorities to add to the budget this year? 

“Mandates, retirement increases, salary increases, contracts go up on software support costs,” Maurer said. 

Next in priority additions are increases needed to maintain service levels of parks. Then comes “projects that save money over time, [such as] retrofitting street lights to LED,” Maurer said.