The City Council’s Finance Committee has proposed adjustments to the 2025 city budget that would cut the proposed tax levy increase by about half. Brent Sheldon, R-Ward 1 and Finance Committee chairman pictured front right, is shown discussing the suggestions with the full council during Monday’s meeting. Screenshot courtesy of the City of Jamestown’s website

The City Council Finance Committee has come forward with some adjustments to the budget, lowering the original proposed tax levy increase by about 50%.

During Monday’s work session councilman Brent Sheldon, R-Ward 1 and chair of the finance committee, said he met with city comptroller Ericka Thomas and that she went over additional expenses and adjustments to be made to the budget. Adjustments include increasing the amount for fuel for the police department, increased Medicare for retirees, a decrease in health insurance expenses, cutting the human rights budget and more. Altogether this leads to a net impact of a decrease of the tax levy, bringing the proposed tax increase down to 3.61% from the original 7.79%.

“That’s a decrease of just over 4%,” Sheldon said. “These are proposals, these are suggestions, if anybody has any other suggestions please let us know. … We vote on the budget next week.”

Councilman Jeff Russell, R-At Large, said that when people hear percentages they often think the amount is more than it is. He said for a house assessed at $90,000 this would mean roughly a $75 tax increase for the entire year. Originally the cost was around $150.

“None of us want to see taxes go up, obviously, but I think some individuals see these percentages and in their mind they think the amounts are much greater than they’re going to be,” Russell said. “But obviously we need to think about … our disabled, our elderly, and where someone might be able to absorb an amount of tax increase, maybe there’s someone else that might have more hardship. So, obviously, none of us want to see an increase but to limit the general impact for the community, that helps.”

Council President Tony Dolce noted that while the 2024 into 2025 budget comes with some risk and that things will be tight into next year, the council has not seen any major increases in the tax levy since 2010 and 2016.

“Since that time it has either been decreased or very, very close to negligible,” Dolce said. “So, again, like everything else our costs are going up and we’re trying to do the best that we can to balance off our increasing costs, decreasing revenues in some cases, and we’ve been blessed these last few years with a sales tax increase every single year, in some cases completely exceeding even what we budgeted. So this year, this is the one year where it’s not going to come out that way.”

Dolce said hopefully the fourth quarter sales tax will be a bit better, but that these are all things the council has to keep in mind, adding that it is not a perfect scenario but a little bit of an improvement to the tax levy and a bit of relief as to what people might face. The council has another week to look over the budget, with the vote set for next Monday.

Because amendments to the budget weren’t made in time for the pre-file deadline for Monday’s meeting, amendments will be made on the floor during the meeting.