Fulfilling obligations a top priority for next city budget

OTTUMWA — Ottumwa City Councilman Dan Reid came with a laundry list of priorities, all of which would be critical to any budget.

But with expenditures once again set to outpace revenues, doing all of it at once will be a heavy lift.

The council met for a work session Tuesday at the Amtrak Depot to discuss its goals for fiscal year 2026, and quality-of-life issues were certainly popular. However, when it was narrowed down, two issues rose to the top — the city's ability to honor its current obligations, and finding more efficiencies to reduce expenses.

"What we want to do is be able to walk in, present you a budget that reflects your goals and priorities and then be able to explain that to your constituents," finance director Cole O'Donnell told the council. "That's what we're looking to do."

Councilmember Keith Caviness, who ran for the council last year on a zero-based budgeting philosophy in which the city would work on a budget from the bottom up, floated the idea once again.

"The thing is, I go all the way back to my budget theory class in my master's program, and what I will tell you is that I've never seen it work," O'Donnell said.

O'Donnell said it was important for the council to prioritize its spending now, so that when departments begin submitted their requests next month, he will have a guide for where to focus during budget meetings and budget preparation.

"It sounds like we're trying to be proactive instead of reactive, which we've done a lot in past years," councilwoman Cara Galloway said. "So we're trying to kind of prevent those hiccups."

O'Donnell said the city's valuation growth, which averages about 1.75% a year, won't cut it moving forward, which is why the city took a redistribution of the local option sales and serve tax to voters a couple months ago.

Reid acknowledged that the most important thing the city needs to do in the next budget is take care of its current obligations. But then he talked about economic development improvements and infrastructure.

"We obviously have our current obligations that have to be paid. You've got to pay your staff, or whatever this contract calls for," he said. "You just have things you have to pay."

O'Donnell said one of the priorities of the next budget would be more efficiencies that would help reduce expenses. He mentioned other communities have looked at solar energy programs in lowering utility costs.

"There are programs out there where you have an investor come in, and basically we don't pay for anything," he said. "But all of our facilities have to have solar on them. Then they take the energy credits to get their investment back, and what we get is the energy which reduces our electric bills.

"It's something we can look at. One of the comments was the Bridge View roof wouldn't sustain the weight of a solar panel, but they do make them lighter. There are other ways to do it, like putting them in the parking lot."

Galloway believed "infrastructure" should be more than just buildings and other repairs. She said it should include the staff members who are in charge of hard infrastucture.

"I would like to see us hopefully not cut people. I think that's really important because a lot of these departments are running pretty low already, and I can't imagine what it would look like if we had to make massive cuts," she said.

Bill Hoffman Jr. believed it was important to continue investing in public safety, whether it be equipment or personnel because "they are tasked with some big things."

"When it comes to emergency service, you can't have equipment that you make work when somebody's life depends on it," he said. "Those departments also do a lot that people don't even realize."

O'Donnell said the budget will assume there is full staff in departments, so even if they aren't fully staffed, the money will be there if they can fill jobs.

Councilman Doug McAntire said a lot will be determined once departments submit their reports.

"This list could be 20 different things, but it doesn't mean anything until all the departments have come in and said what they need," he said. "But we really can't do anything until we know what money is coming in and what needs to go out."