BILLINGS - The focus for the city council remains on the budget.
The council heard about the budgets for city administration, building, police, and planning, community development, & code enforcement at a work session on Monday night.
The proposed police department budget is for down about $820,242, about 2.27 percent.
The police department budget for fiscal year 25 was $36,090,209 compared to $35,269,967 this fiscal year, which starts on July 1.
It all stems from the legislature passing laws that would decrease property taxes, but actually lower tax revenue for Billings.
“We're obviously in a very difficult financial situation due to some of the property tax changes statewide,” said Council member Jennifer Owen.
Owen says the city will be able to take care of the shortfall without cutting police officers.
“It means leaving some positions that are currently vacant open for a little longer, at least that's one of the options that's been presented by staff,” said Owen. “We'll take a look at as many options as we can find, but at this point it should not be layoffs. It might just be some positions not getting filled.”
But one council member points to the department already being short on officers and believes those positions are necessary and need to be filled.
“I'm going to push this council to keep those five positions and push you to fill those five positions,” Council member Bill Kennedy said to Police Chief Rich St. John. “So, how would you over the next year, go forward and do that?”
“We would hire post-certified officers only,” St. John said. “So what that means is that we would be advertising and hiring officers who have been a police officer somewhere before and do not need to go to the academy. So what that does is it cuts 12 weeks off the process."
Owen says the city has to raise the mills because of two bills passed in the last legislative session.
“That's a very controversial provision,” Owen said. “But it is written in state law as a requirement. ”It is not discretionary as to city council. We are told we must levy these additional taxes by the state of Montana.
It was thought that the state would provide some help to Billings with the charter limiting the number of mills, but now that no longer appears to be the case.
“There's been a lot of rumors out there that the city of Billings was somehow made whole in these property tax bills,” said Owen. “That's not true.”
And despite a decrease in the budget, the chief says public safety will not suffer.
The council will review proposed budgets for finance, urban renewal districts, fire, and municipal court at a special work session on Tuesday.
