The Great Falls City Commission Tuesday passed a $169 million budget for 2027 and gave initial approval to property tax increases of about $61 on a $600,000 home. The budget includes plans to use $631,732 in general fund reserves to cover expenses, an annual practice that has diminished those re serves in recent years. And while not all budget requests made it into the 2027 document, city commissioners and the mayor will receive pay increases in a process that one commissioner decried as opaque. The 6.59% property tax increase will amount to $1.4 million for the city’s general fund. Montana law allows cities to pass limited increases without voter approval to reflect inflation and health insurance costs. About $820,000 of the increase is explicitly reserved for staff health insurance. Two residents spoke at the public hearing Tuesday night against the tax increases. City leaders pointed to increased expenses, primarily from labor costs resulting from union contracts. Salary and benefit costs are expected to increase by nearly $4.3 million across all city departments in 2027. The sharpest increases are in departments covered by the property tax-supported general fund, which covers city administration and park and recreation, as well as public safety departments like fire, police and courts. “It would be really nice to say no more taxes,” Commissioner Rick Tryon said after the public comments. “But in reality, and being responsible, we can’t do that.” Not all budget requests were granted. City documents show several requests for fire and police personnel and equipment that weren’t granted in the 2027 budget. A request for an additional $100,000 to support the Scheels Aim High Big Sky recreation center was denied, though the facility was already slated for a $400,000 infusion from the city’s general fund. Several lifeguard and instructor requests for Aim High Big Sky were also denied. The city has also faced challenges on the revenue side. The three-year Calumet property tax protest deducted six-figure sums from the city’s general fund after the case was settled last year, and new laws from the 2025 Montana Legislature changed how cities and counties raise property tax revenue. On one hand, the city can take a larger inflationary increase. The law used to limit those increases to half the average inflation for the past three years. The ceiling is now the full average of inflation over three years — 2.87% for the coming budget. But revenue from new development, called newly taxable property, was muted by new legislation. City Finance Director Melissa Kinzler told commissioners that her staff is still requesting information from the Montana Department of Revenue, which sets property values each year. While the department is working under a new system, the early indication is that the city’s projection of $300,000 in newly taxable property revenue might not have been conservative enough. “A preliminary review of what we’re looking at with the DOR, we may be a little bit short,” Kinzler said. The overall picture for taxpayers is an expected property tax increase of $61.21 on a $600,000 home, or $28.84 on a $300,000 home. While Tuesday’s resolution approved the proposed budget, the city will hold a dedicated public hearing on the property tax increase Aug. 18. Separately, the city commission will consider proposed increases to special district assessments and utility fees for water, sewer, stormwater and trash services. Each of those proposals will be considered at future commission meetings. As part of Tuesday’s budget approval, the city commission passed increases to their annual stipend. The increases nearly triple the annual stipend for the mayor and more than double that for the four city commissioners. The current annual stipend for the mayor is $2,100. That will increase to $6,000 for the year. City commissioners also currently receive a $2,100 annual stipend, and the 2027 increase will bring it to $4,700. The stipends are in addition to annual base salaries of $5,616 for the mayor and $3,714 for each commissioner. City officials noted that the stipends hadn’t been updated since 1989. At Tuesday’s meeting, Commissioner Joe McKenney made a motion to break out the commission stipend for a separate vote and public discussion at a later date. Commissioner Casey Schreiner supported the motion, but it failed on a 2-3 vote, with Commissioners Tryon and Shannon Wilson, as well as Mayor Cory Reeves, against. McKenney acknowledged that brief comments had been made in the past about increasing commission pay, but those discussions never reached a clear public forum. “I was not aware that those informal discussions had progressed to a formal proposal,” McKenney said at the meeting. A line item for the stipend increase was included in a supplementary budget document, but it only noted the added cost and didn’t specify the size of the increase relative to the current amount. Aside from a few comments, commission pay wasn’t discussed in detail at public meetings and wasn’t fully laid out in budget documents. The Electric reported that much of the stipend discussion took place in emails among commissioners and city staff over multiple years. “We’ve discussed this several times at work sessions and amongst ourselves,” Reeves said at Tuesday’s meeting. As a result of the stipend debate, the budget resolution passed on a 3-2 vote with Commissioners Schreiner and McKenney against. The post Tax increase, cash reserves will cover new expenses in 2027 Great Falls budget appeared first on Montana Free Press. ...read more read less