City of Amarillo working through 2024-25 budget in workshops

The city of Amarillo has been engaged in budget workshops since Tuesday to complete its 2024 budget before its deadline later in August.

At the meetings, the proposed budget being discussed would be $72.5 million less than last year’s $531 million, with a slightly lower tax rate of $0.38101 per $100 valuation compared to last year’s rate of $0.39195. With this proposed budget, the city would have a 13% reduction, with the most significant reduction in capital improvement projects being only a third of the cost of last year. Capital improvement project spending would be lowered from $135.5 million to about $44 million.

If the budget comes in anywhere near the current discussed range, it would be the lowest city budget since the 2021/2022 city budget and the first decrease in budget since the 2020/2021 fiscal year.

Laura Storrs, assistant city manager, presented the proposed budget to the council on Tuesday stating that hotel occupancy taxes were less than 1% off last year, which is expected to come close to expected revenues by the year’s end. Among capital construction improvements for the coming fiscal year, street improvements budgeted at just under $20 million make up the greatest percentage of spending.

City expenditures within each department have been and will continue to be discussed, with no votes on the budget until the regular city council meeting.

New Amarillo City Manager Grayson Path sat in on his first official meetings since he was hired on June 1, adding his fresh insight to the process, which will be his first significant contribution to the city. At the end of day one, Path commended and weighed in on Storrs and the department heads on their work to bring a budget to the council.

"I have been doing budgets for 11 or 12 years and have done many budgets for cities. I am very impressed by the working knowledge that Ms. Storrs has," Path said. "It takes a lot of working knowledge of a lot of functions and factions of the community ... I am very impressed by what I have seen today."

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: City of Amarillo working through 2024-25 budget in workshops