The Sioux City Council held a work session on February 28, 2026, to review the proposed FY2027 operating budget. Finance staff presented a balanced budget that reduces the city’s property tax levy by 13.5%, maintains core services, and reflects a 0.5% increase in operating spending over the adopted FY2026 budget. The presentation covered revenue impacts from state legislative changes, departmental budgets, and improvement requests. Council members and department heads engaged in detailed discussions on potential reductions, service modernization, and funding priorities.
Rayford. Shaner. Scott. Okay, go ahead. Good morning, Mayor and Council. Morning. Morning. I'm gonna wait for the presentation to come up, hopefully. So today we're here to um discuss the proposed operating budget for the FY 2027 budget year. First, I'll talk about the uh timeline. We have already um went through the CIP here CIP hearing. Um back in July, uh we had we have the departments do an entry, um both the CIP and the operating budget. Uh then after that we do a um peer review for CIP, um, finance does a um a full review, we do a manager review, uh, we send um questions back to the departments, we do um reviews of um improvement requests, we balance the CIP and the operating budget, and um then we're at this point here. Um we bring and present the the best um proposed budget to the council for your review. Um beyond that, we once we um get past today, we will do a wrap-up hearing on um March 18th, and beyond that, we'll approve the budget. Is the wrap-up on a Wednesday morning? That right from 8 30 to noon. Right. Yep. So this year we went um we asked the council for your priorities as we have in the years past. Um again this year the top priority from our council was infrastructure. Uh the second um in line was quality of life, economic development, followed by health and safety, and then customer service. So we what we do when we go through this budget and the departments go through the budget, we take your priorities and try to ensure that the budget is this budget we're presenting to you, um, encompasses all of your priorities in the order in which you provided them to us. So the highlights of this year, um, we have a balanced budget, uh, complies with the city's opposite um adopted financial policies. Um what we're we're introducing you to you today reduces the property tax levy by 13 um nearly 13.5 percent. So we're pretty proud of that um of the product that we've um we're put will be presenting to you today. Um, and this maintains all of our core functions, um operating strengths, and preserves the current service um levels across all departments. And and point out the property tax levy is going down by 13 percent, but the overall levy is going down as well, correct? What? The overall levies are going down as well. Well, our our part of the levy, yes, and we'll go down 13.5 percent. Um now there's a portion of that is the schools and the counties, and we can't control what they do. So um our part is a reduction of 13.5 percent. Uh budget impacts. Um, as you can see, there's a lot of um negative impacts, but we do have some positive impacts this year. Um property uh values increased uh 13.3 percent, which is good. Um it helps us give relief to our um citizens. Uh the rollback percentage was beneficial to us. Uh it changed and reduced that. So the reduction that you'll see that we present later, 45 dollars of that reduction is uh is um due to the rollback percentage change. Um's did not have a change in the contribution. Um FPRSI did have a reduction, um, not quite one percent, and um our 411 expenses decreased 13.8 percent last year. Negative impacts. Um we are still seeing the impacts of a lot of the different Senate files and changes that have happened at legislative level, and um there are certainly other items that are still um up in the air this year for property tax reform. Um, as you can see, there's a numerous items. Um the Senate file 718 is a very large item that's still impacting us today. Um, cumulatively it has been a 2.8 um percent negative to our budget impacts. Um house file 252, uh 2552, um, which changed the um property tax credit into a permanent rollback around the first 150,000 dollars, um had nearly a 500,000 reduction to our budget. House file 252, 2552, which changed the property tax credit into a permanent rollback around the first 150,000, had nearly a 500,000 reduction to our budget. Also, you'll see we use fund balances.