Finance director Kevin Knopik asked the council to determine its spending priorities in preparation of the 2025 budget. Prior to the Monday, May 20 workshop, each council member submitted requests for various funding requests, from adding new signs to the city to adding staff to administration. Then they were asked to prioritize from the compiled list.
The top priorities chosen by the council on Monday included putting more dollars toward a 10-year plan for projects and a 10-year plan for staffing, funding downtown planning and shoreline planning, creating better aesthetics down Lake Street and Broadway Avenue in the downtown corridor, as well as redoing mulched areas in downtown, dedicating dollars toward downtown redevelopment, adding city welcome signs, and funding the bridge lighting.
Mayor Mara Bain stressed that the downtown plan and shoreline plan, as well as the downtown redevelopment, were “gaps” in the city’s budget planning, so she marked those as two of her top four priorities, as did council member Hanna Valento. Both council member Blake Roberts and Leif Erickson stressed downtown aesthetics, while Erickson added a request for additional funding for streets as another one of his four.
All five council members were unanimous on wanting to put the priority on adding more funding for a 10-year staffing plan, while four council members put a priority on a 10-year plan for projects, with council member Sam Husnik not choosing the latter; Husnik instead included city welcome signs in his top four spending priorities.
Not included in Bain’s top four was extra funding for parks. She said that her decision not to include it comes with “some remorse,” but emphasized that though she doesn’t believe parks needs more funding than the projected dollars, she stressed “we need to stick to the plan.”
The council faced debate and discussions about the various funding requests, including Roberts’ requests for snow removal and street sweeping in the downtown corridor.
Public works director Dave Adams was apprehensive about any commitment to do so because it would “open a whole new can of worms,” saying that change would require upending current policy on what the city’s snow removal expectations are.
Valento argued that business owners already have incentive by nature of wanting business to keep their portions of their sidewalks clear, while Bain also indicated apprehension about how that could open the city up to liability. Snow removal and enhanced street sweeping were not one of the final priorities listed by the council.
However, the council did indicate it will begin to fully fund the winter season’s lighting of the bridge over Broadway Avenue in 2025, with the goal of garnering more donations by area businesses in 2024.
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