The Evansville City council has passed the 2025 City Budget unanimously on Monday night. While expansive, highlights include extra investment into the public safety and city streets.
The approximately $500 million dollar budget is balanced and includes the Evansville Water And Sewer Utility budget as well.
This comes after months of work by the individual city departments and Mayor Stephanie Terry’s office.
Council President Zach Heronemus said the budget reflects an investment into what residents want to see.
“Number one being public safety. Number two being housing,” he said. “This Mayor also proposed a budget that doubled the amount of street improvements from the year prior and this particular fiscal year in which she's operating.”
The street improvement fund is now approximately $10 million, and the affordable housing trust fund award has doubled to $25,000 per award.
The Evansville Police will also see their salaries jump by 7-percent in 2025.
This is Mayor Stephanie Terry’s first budget. It started with proposed departmental budgets which could be modified at the request of the council.
Angela Koehler Lindsey is the sole republican on Council. She appreciated the city administration answering her questions along the way.
“I also appreciate that this is balanced and that we are being careful, I feel like we're working hard to not put an undue impact on the taxpayers,” she said. “So thank you for that as well. That's always going to be my question … ‘what can we do for the taxpayers to lower the impact on them?’”
Heronemus said it was a smooth budget process. He’s looking forward to working together for the next cycle.
“I believe the investments are good, and the fact that we are sitting on a balanced budget moving into this upcoming year that's going to address, you know, public safety needs, address the street improvement needs, which I would say have been lagging behind for many years …”
This was also Council member Alex Burton’s final meeting. He ran unopposed for the District 77 state rep seat. Once elected he’ll start there immediately.
“It has been an absolute joy working with you all this council and the previous — I am going to miss it, but I'm not going that far away.”
He’ll just be representing the city as a whole in the statehouse.
While the budget is declared “balanced,” Controller Robert Gunter said with last minute changes, the budget went over by $160,000.
“But we have enough reserves to cover that,” he said. “So yes, I'm very comfortable that (we are) able to meet this.”
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