Marion ponders large budget requests
Staff writers
Having adopted a new, more hands-on approach to budgeting, Marion City Council is grappling with departmental budget requests that greatly exceed the current budget and will decide next Monday whether the city will seek authority to increase taxes to collect more money.
Initial departmental requests topped $9.6 million. The city’s 2026 budget expenditures are expected to be $7.1 million.
Council members and officials cautioned at a work session Monday night that they have not yet begun to reduce the department requests.
“We didn’t screen anything, didn’t scrub anything, didn’t break anything down,” city administrator Brian Wells said.
Among items presented to the council Monday was a police department request for a $100,000 increase over its current budget of $496,000.
Council member Tim Baxa and Police Chief Aaron Slater said that the increase is largely because of higher insurance and retirement costs.
The Marion Fire Department also is asking for a major raise. It received $59,677 this year and is requesting $134,125 for 2027.
The fire department works on a volunteer-basis, Baxa said, but told “we were in the extremely poor category” for financial support.
“We’ve got one firefighter that has boots and a helmet, and that’s it,” Wells said.
Other departments are asking for money for capital improvements.
The water department has requested $60,000 for electrical improvement, $1.25 million for basin rehabilitation, $1.5 million for water treatment ozone upgrades, and $30,000 for an algae monitoring buoy.
Council member Kevin Burkholder said he thought cities were contributing less to the buoy.
The council will meet July 20 to decide whether they can stay within the Kansas Revenue Neutral Act, which requires that it present to voters the rationale generating more property tax revenue even if the rate is unchanged.
City officials said that final budget numbers would not be set this week, and that the council might not increase the tax collections even if it decided to seek the authority.
Under a 2021 law, local jurisdictions must decide by July 20 whether they are expecting to collect more property tax than the previous year. If property valuations have risen, jurisdictions must reduce the tax rate or conduct a public hearing before Sept. 20 to justify the revenue increase.
Wells acknowledged that the city hadn’t kept up with inflation.
“Groceries go up and we need to keep up with it,” he said. “The city needs to work the same.”
Mayor Michael Powers said the council would examine each department in more detail than previously.
“I don’t see how we can go revenue neutral,” he said. “We are making up for four years of avoiding raising anything and kicking the can down the road. We have reached the end of the road.”
The council has exceeded the revenue neutral rate each of the last four years but in some cases actually lowered tax rates.
Powers also complained that the budget process did not allow for unexpected requests during the fiscal year.
“We all know, over the course of the year, there are things we are going to be approached about, and we are going to want to fund some of them,” he said.
He cited as an example the school officials’ desire to have a traffic signal or warning at Freeborn and Main Sts. to provide more safety for crossing schoolchildren. A traffic light was placed at that intersection for several years but later was removed.
This year is the first time since Powers was elected that all council members have met to review a working spreadsheet with all of the department’s budget requests on it.
Council members asked questions Monday that ranged from what each line item meant to when they needed to decide whether to increase taxes.