The City of Peoria’s updated financial plan for 2025 is formally in place.
The $288 million revised biennial passed unanimously during Tuesday night’s city council meeting, with two members absent.
“Overall, I think that it's a pretty sound spending plan that really tries to focus our efforts on capital projects next year,” Peoria City Manager Patrick Urich told WCBU, noting the updated spending plan puts $194 million toward city operations and directs more than $70 million to capital improvement projects.
“We’ve got a lot of money for road work, a lot of money for drainage work, continuing the CSO (combined sewer overflow) projects,” said Urich.
Meanwhile, the $32.3 million property tax levy for the next fiscal year was approved on a 6-3 vote, with Denis Cyr, John Kelly and Kiran Velpula in opposition, and Chuck Grayeb and Zach Oyler absent.
The property tax levy rate remained flat at 1.555%. However, residents may see some higher tax bills based on their property value.
“What we look at is the dollar amount of the tax extension is going up, which is equal to the growth in assessed value,” said city finance director Kyle Cratty. “So what that can mean is your property may have gone up in value (and) there may be other additional properties in the community that are seeing growth.
“So there is the possibility, yes, that if you saw value growth in your property, your tax bill may go up based off that growth value. But really that's what this levy captures; it really keeps what the council has looked at doing over history, of maintaining that rate — but really making sure that we're capturing the increase in value in the community.”
While revenue is budgeted at $275 million, Urich said the bulk of the $13 million gap isn’t out of line.
“We're continuing to spend down money that we have in our capital funds for different projects that we have going,” he said. “From a general fund standpoint, from our general operating budget, it's only about a $2 million difference between revenues and expenses.
“That's really going to pay down pensions, which is the plan that we said to the city council that we would do. So, that's where the gap is covered, though — through the general fund, and then the $2 million that's going towards pensions is coming out of the general fund.”
