Fiscal Year 2029 Budget Timing

At a glance

Based on auto-generated captions; names and details may be misheard.

What: whether to pause work on the fiscal year 2029 budget gap until after the next legislative session, now that the fiscal year 2028 budget is balanced.
Where it stands: at the 2026-10-19 work session the council indicated consensus to follow the city manager's plan to pause. No formal vote was taken.
Next: staff reassess the gap in April or May 2027, once legislative changes are known; public discussion of the FY29 budget would start around summer 2027.

Budget work so far produced about $11.5 million in cuts and savings for fiscal year 2028. The gap narrowed enough that City Manager Scott Sanders said the city can report a balanced FY28 budget and use the normal state forms and February-March process.
The FY29 gap is still projected at about $4.5 million. Staff will keep scrutinizing vacancies and considering reorganizations and cutbacks as opportunities arise. Capital improvement plan reductions over the next two months could also affect the operating budget.
Waiting lets the city see what the legislature does (including the 2% property tax growth cap) before sizing the gap.

Sanders recommended deciding on any FY29 cuts in the September-October 2027 range, with the current council, so that new members seated in January 2028 are not handed a finished budget of close to a billion dollars. Four council seats are on the ballot next year.
Several members supported the pause, citing staff fatigue and the chance to see how current cuts play out. One member said cuts of this size may be a "new normal" while the cap remains, and wants to keep collecting public input.
One member preferred returning to the normal cycle (budgets decided in March and April), did not want one council tying the hands of the next, and would have preferred to run a longer public process this year.
Another member cautioned against holding the discussion too long because it would get caught up in campaigns and elections.
Sanders called it a close call on staff morale and said he does not expect the FY29 gap to be much smaller.

Open. Public engagement continues; the pause applies to the hard cuts, not to collecting input.

About 14 minutes across 1 meeting (from transcript timestamps; approximate).

Meeting	Minutes
2026-10-19 - City Council Work Session	14

2026-10-19 - City Council Work Session — city manager proposed pausing the FY29 budget until after the legislative session; council discussed timing and agreed to proceed (about 14 minutes).