We are in the home stretch.
At least for local government budgets. The Sept. 20 deadline for public hearings on budgets is the culmination of a months-long process. Some units of government, like the City of Hutchinson and USD 308, have already approved their 2026 budgets and property tax levies. Others will over the next couple of weeks.
Public budgeting is how we decide what kind of community we want to be.
Budgets are ultimately an exercise in balancing competing priorities. How do we provide necessary and valuable services to the public without making taxes unnecessarily burdensome?
Nobody wants higher taxes for the sake of higher taxes. With rare exceptions, elected officials and top administrators are property owners who have their own tax bills to pay every month.
The job of taxes is to provide services to the public: law enforcement, firefighting, streets and roads, schools, libraries, parks, and more, with the administration needed to manage those services. Any of these would be missed by large segments of the community.
What services the public needs from local government are only part of the puzzle. A lot of the work of budgeting is deciding how government can most effectively and efficiently provide those services. Personnel accounts for the lion’s share of most budgets.
Effective and efficient government depends on having effective and efficient employees, so much more than a raw headcount. Whether looking at the public or private sector, effective employees are the ones with experience and skills who are engaged with the work they are doing.
Hiring experienced, skilled employees is often expensive. Developing experienced, skilled employees takes time. And if employees who have gained experience and skill on the job leave for greener pastures, taxpayers have effectively paid to train someone else’s employee.
Paying employees the bare minimum seldom works out well. This applies to both business and public administration, except in the latter case, citizens ultimately pay the price when government does not invest enough into personnel.
The City of Hutchinson’s budget includes a 4.5% merit increase for employees.
Cities and counties must invest in more than people. Deferred maintenance on both our public infrastructure and private property hurts the bottom line in the long run. Demolishing blighted buildings is ultimately more expensive than funding programs that would encourage and help fund renovations. After years of residents complaining about flooding streets, Hutchinson is now rushing to complete stormwater projects to avoid a potentially economically devastating change to the floodplain maps.
Some of the current budget woes are the direct result of a lack of sufficient investment in the past.
In the short term, some additional expenses can be absorbed through reserves, which can allow government to catch up on overdue expenses without raising taxes.
Most units of government wisely maintain a healthy balance in their reserves, typically multiple funds for specific purposes alongside a general fund reserve. They can serve as an emergency fund for unforeseen issues during the year, but sometimes governments will rely on those funds to reduce or avoid service cuts or property tax hikes.
The City of Hutchinson’s proposed 2026 budget projects a significant reduction in reserves along with a modest tax hike.
Governments can’t keep dipping into reserves too much or for too long. Once the piggy bank is broken, it can be hard to fill it back up. When government loses the ability to dip into reserves, painful service cuts or tax hikes become much more likely.
Another reason why maintaining reserves is critical is that budgeting also involves a lot of unknowns. Agencies are finalizing budgets now that will be paying for things up to Dec. 31, 2026. Prices change, sometimes unpredictably. Construction and insurance are two notable wildcards in budgets due to bidding processes and insurance renewals. Even for projects done by public employees, like road resurfacing, material prices can be volatile.
For these reasons, it’s best to rely on reserves only as a short-term solution. We caution against the rapid depletion of reserves in anticipation of future tax increases, particularly ones that rely on a vote of the public.
If there are programs or services you want to see maintained, keep a close eye on public budgets this year and in the coming years. Don’t hesitate to speak up about the services you value most. There are a lot of worthy things the government can spend money on—more than there is money to go around. Unless significant changes expand the tax base, future budgets are likely to see either reductions in services or greater increases in taxes.
-The Hutchinson Tribune Editorial Board