Gainesville has a $35 million proposed budget. Here's what's in it

May 29—Gainesville will likely adopt a balanced budget of $35 million — a 1% decrease from the previous year — to fund city operations in the coming weeks.

The budgeted general fund balance anticipates $4.72 million for capital projects in fiscal year 2024. Primary sources of revenue, according to city documents, are sales tax funds in the amount of $7.8 million (22.5% of the budgeted revenue), franchise fees totaling $4.2 million (12%) and property taxes amounting to $1.9 million (6%).

The latest draft of the proposed budget includes a 5% pay increase for city employees across the board, with the addition of the two new positions of traffic signal technician and senior accountant.

City Manager Bryan Lackey said expenses in the budget that have seen the highest increase include fuel and energy, transportation as well as technology costs — mostly for reasons of ensuring cyber security.

"Anything that deals with fuels and energy is costing us a lot because things are going up," he said. "We're still spending a lot of money on IT, trying to keep up with the bad guys — that's not something we did at one time."

The total for the city's information technology expenses came out at $1.4 million.

The proposed budget is scheduled for approval on June 6.

Lackey said the city "anticipates a full rollback in the millage rate," meaning potentially lower taxes for Gainesville residents.

"This year the rate is 0.397 (mills)," he said. "We anticipate it being around 0.251 (mills) for (fiscal year) 2024. We will better define what the actual full roll back rate will be as we get closer to a final digest number in June — before budget adoption."

One mill is equal to $1 for each $1,000 in assessed property value.

The anticipated rollback to 0.251 is based on the city's preliminary digest number, Lackey said.