The Centralia City Council held a public hearing and unanimously approved the city’s 2025-2026 biennial budget on first reading during the council’s regular meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 12.
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The Centralia City Council held a public hearing and unanimously approved the city’s 2025-2026 biennial budget on first reading during the council’s regular meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 12.
Per state law, municipalities such as Centralia are required to submit balanced budgets. The final public hearing and reading of the ordinance adopting Centralia’s 2025-2026 biennial budget will be held during the next Centralia City Council meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 26.
Centralia Finance Director Bret Broderson told the council the city’s 2025-2026 budget totaled $164,067,705 across all funds.
That is a $8,918,375, or approximately 5.4%, increase from the 2023-2024 budget.
Increases in expenditures have come from inflation, including significant liability insurance cost increases, mandated indigent defense expenses and other unexpected problems the city may have to pay to address, city staff stated in the proposed budget.
The budget’s general fund expenditures — which includes the Centralia Police Department, city council and staff positions and the municipal court — accounts for $30,738,550 of the city’s 2025-2026 biennial budget.
General fund revenues are projected to total $30,854,685 over the budget biennium according to budget documents.
Of the general fund expenditures, 53% went to the Centralia Police Department, 11% to the parks department, 8% to the finance department, 5% to the municipal court, 5% to the human resources department, and the was rest dispersed to the city manager, building inspection and city clerk departments, the city attorney, building maintenance, the Greenwood Cemetery, the Centralia Timberland Library, special appropriations, the city council and non-departmental appropriations.
“The increase in the finance department, primarily this biennium, is due to increases related to the implementation of the new accounting system,” Brodersen said. “Normally, the finance department is not nearly that large of a slice of the pie … We’re normally closer to the human resources percentage there.”
General fund revenues over the budget biennium come mainly from taxes collected by the city, which account for 72% of the revenues.
Of the remaining revenues, 13% come from charges for services, 3% come from licensing fees, 3% from intergovernmental funds, 2% coming from building inspection reserves, 1% coming from fines and forfeitures and the rest from miscellaneous sources.
While an estimated $1.2 million budget deficit loomed over the budget throughout the drafting process, it was balanced after the council approved both a property tax increase and city fee and permitting cost increases last month to boost general fund revenue.
In previous years, cuts had been made to city services and staffing positions, but during the drafting process of this budget, the Centralia Finance Committee stated if more cuts were made, they would have to be to the city’s police, streets and parks departments.
Included within the proposed biennial budget are $15,000 annual payments to help support services offered by Lewis County Seniors and $12,000 annual payments to the Economic Alliance of Lewis County.
The council also hopes the new partnership with the Economic Alliance of Lewis County — for business recruitment and employee retention services to spark economic development — will help avoid a potential increase to sales taxes too.
Their goal is to help businesses acquire and retain better employees, increase the quality of services and sales provided to bring more visitors to Centralia and hopefully boost sales tax revenue in the process.
Brodersen added some new city staffing positions previously approved by the council were still in the proposed budget.
These new staff positions include a new parks building and operations manager, a parks maintenance technician, a streets, stormwater, equipment rental and revolving operations manager, a plans examiner and permit technician for the Community Development Department and Centralia City Light demand service technicians.
Despite the increase in property taxes, city fees and licensing costs, worries about a potential budget deficit over the 2027-2028 biennium still loomed amongst the council.
“It was nice to hear from the Economic Alliance about what they can do for us in the future that will hopefully help spur on economic development in Centralia,” Councilor Norm Chapman said. “... But we’re right on the edge, to where two years from now if nothing changes in terms of revenue coming in, there could be service cuts, there could be layoffs, there could be some hard times for the city as a whole.”
He wanted to ensure that both city staff and Centralia residents knew that tough times could still be on the horizon, as they are in many other municipalities throughout Washington.
Centralia Mayor Kelly Smith Johnston said she was proud that the city’s budget issues weren’t as bad as some of the others.
“I think that reflects the lean operations the city has been managing for years that don’t come without a cost,” Smith Johnston said.
She added the city is still exploring all other possible revenue sources.
For more information on the recently approved increase in Centralia property taxes, read The Chronicle’s coverage at https://tinyurl.com/3bscvusd.
To view Centralia’s proposed 2025-2025 biennial budget and past biennium’s budgets, visit the city’s website at https://www.cityofcentralia.com/201/Budget.