City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome to Agenda Edina, a program summarizing the actions taken at City Hall that affect you most. I'm your host, Dorothea Marty. The City of Edina's proposed 2027 budget is nearly $1.5 million lower than projected just three months ago. City Manager Scott Neal's proposal includes a total property tax levy of just under $68 million, a 6.5% increase over 2026. Since sharing preliminary projections with the City Council in April, staff identified additional savings through operational efficiencies, reduced printing costs, adjustments to service levels, debt repayment strategies, and the use of one-time funds for one-time expenses. The proposed budget also reflects savings from previous Council decisions, including transferring assessing services to Hennepin County and combining the public works and engineering departments. While reducing the overall levy, the proposal continues to invest in the City's long-term priorities. It increases funding for deferred maintenance of City facilities, strengthens annual capital and equipment replacement funding, and sets aside resources for process automation and artificial intelligence initiatives to improve efficiency and customer service.

We had a number of goals when we started our budget making process for 2027. A couple of those were to reduce the rate of growth of our general fund spending and property taxes. So we've been able to do that. This will be the fourth consecutive year that we've reduced that rate of growth from year to year. So that was one goal we had. Another was to figure out how to fund and to manage a number of deferred maintenance projects, some that residents might notice and some that you might not notice that are behind the scenes. So we spent a lot of time doing that, figuring out how to use existing reserves, existing project budgets to really accomplish a lot behind the scenes there.

Presenting a draft budget in June is the earliest ever by any Dinah City Manager. City Council will review the proposal throughout the summer, including a budget work session August 18. The Council must adopt a preliminary property tax levy by the end of September, and residents will have opportunities to provide feedback before the budget is finalized in December.