The City of Owensboro approved its $157.8 million budget for 2024-25 at Tuesday’s City Commission meeting. The budget assumes no tax rate increases.
“It assumes or makes no changes to city tax rates. It includes investments in the priorities that [the Commission] has provided to us, including public safety, infrastructure, and economic development, while providing the resources needed by the department to provide the high-level services that our citizens expect us to provide,” City Manager Nate Pagan said during the meeting.
The budget accounts for a 4% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for all employees, totaling $851,840 to employee wages. While they try to maintain competitive wages in surrounding cities, a $609,821 decrease in the city’s pension costs also makes this possible.
This is because they have been completely phased in, according to Pagan.
“If you’ve been around a few years, you know pensions have been a long-term challenge,” Pagan said at the budget hearing last month. “Twelve years ago, the state gave us a 12% annual increase for our pension costs, that’s fully phased in now. … The sizeable bumps are hopefully a thing of the past.”
Director of Finance and Services Angela Waninger predicts an increase in revenue from the City’s primary sources: occupational licenses, property taxes, OMU dividend, insurance premium license fees and net profit licenses.
A full budget breakdown and the department’s requests can be found here.
