New Philadelphia City Council has approved this year’s budget with a week to spare before a March 31st deadline.
Total spending for 2026 is set at about 43-million dollars. Total revenue is forecasted at just over 40 million dollars.
Auditor Heather Denham says the city is depending on last year’s carryover to balance the budget. That compares to 2025’s spending of 40.5 million dollars and 35.5 million in revenue, where the previous year’s carryover was again used to make up the difference.
Safety Director Kevin Milligan says the safety forces have cut around 1 million dollars from their budgets over the past two years and only plan to fill two or three of the seven openings in the police and fire departments.
“We are getting to a point where we’re going to see operational impacts. There’s no doubt. Not only increased response times, in ability to cover certain calls and probably referring and depending on area departments to cover our calls.”
Milligan says the police department has been short-staffed for the last three years while experiencing a 28 percent increase in call volume.
He adds the city will have to make difficult budgeting decisions soon.
“It’s going to be tough now in this economic market and inflation and competing interest with schools to go back to the taxpayers and ask for dollars is going to be a challenge. There’s no doubt about that. I’m sure we’re going to have to make some difficult decisions before even thinking about going back to the taxpayers.”
Councilman and finance committee chair Steve Rippeth said there will be difficult decisions ahead as revenue outpaces expenditures.
“We cannot continue to do what we’ve always done and expect it to turnout any differently than the last several years have, and I will tell you has finance chair, I will not support any kind of tax increase until we have systematically looked at every single department and every activity we do to see if we’re doing it the best we can.”
Milligan and other officials said they will begin planning for next year’s budget in April after criticism from City Council members that administrators waited too long to make financial decisions this year.
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