The Aurora City Council is set to consider a $759.6 million 2025 city budget, almost $200 million higher than last year’s budget.
While the overall budget is higher, it also is based on an expected large jump in revenue for 2025, up to $633.4 million. The rest of the budget will come from $126.2 million in project carryovers and revenue from 2024 and other prior year budgets.
Chris Minick, the city’s chief financial officer, said the budget is balanced, and anticipates strong consumptive tax revenues – sales taxes, gas taxes, food and beverage taxes and hotel taxes – as well as an increase in the equalized assessed value to $5.5 billion.
Minick also said while the city will ask for more property taxes, because of the higher assessed value, the tax rate is estimated to be lower than it has been since 2009.
“Probably one of the more important concepts … is the city has been able to collect more tax revenue while lowering the rate because of the increase in the equalized assessed value,” Minick said.
The City Council’s Finance Committee on Thursday unanimously recommended the budget. The full council will hold a public hearing, and vote on the budget, at a special meeting after the Dec. 3 Committee of the Whole meeting.
Minick said the city estimates the property tax rate for the city’s portion of property tax will decrease to $1.67 for each $100 assessed value from the current rate of about $1.70 for each $100 of assessed value.
Officials are estimating the impact would be about $87 in additional property tax for a property valued at $300,000. He said about $58 of that increase would go toward about an overall $3.1 million increase in the city’s contribution to public safety pension funds, for police and fire.
The increase in assessed value is attributed to new development in the city and the normal inflationary appreciation in property values. Part of it also is due to the dissolution of Tax Increment Financing District 3 downtown.
The budget includes a $254.9 million general fund, which is the city’s basic operating fund, an increase of about $20 million from 2024. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the general fund comes from four city departments: The Police Department, the Fire Department, the Public Works Department and Public Facilities. About 33% of the general fund comes from property taxes, with the rest coming from sales and gas taxes, food and beverage tax, hotel tax and building permits.
The budget anticipates the equivalent of an additional 42 full-time employees, eight of those sworn police officers as well as two sergeants and a digital forensic employee, and one new administrative support services chief in the Fire Department.
The city has a number of capital projects in the budget, many of them carryovers from past years, including the final part of the new Public Works Building and the RiverEdge Park expansion. Other public works projects for the year include buying the valet parking garage from the Aurora Civic Center Authority, building two new fire stations and planning for a third, improvements to Bilter Road, improvements at Galena Boulevard and New York Street downtown and improvements to Millennium Park.
slord@tribpub.com
