The city of Ames held a town budget meeting to hear public input for the fiscal year 2025-2026 and the five-year Capital Improvements Plan (CIP).
“So tonight, we’re going to try to accomplish two things,” Ames City Manager Steve Schainker said. “First, I want our finance director, Corey Goodenow, to go over some major aspects of the budget. Maybe we have some questions about the budget or capital improvement itself. And then, more importantly, we want to take time to get input from all of you. We’re going to ask you to give us input into the city operating budget that includes all the services that we provide that you receive throughout the year.”
The meeting started with an overview of the budget calendar, the process beginning Dec. 10, when the council will review initial budget issues with city staff.
“We’ll look at collective revenues today,” Finance Director Corey Goodenow said. “We’ll look at hotel and motel tax collections for the past year, the upcoming year and what we’re expecting in terms of revenue. We’ll start talking about issues and priorities and then, of course, preference levels in terms of service. So that’s an important meeting as we start to get direction from elected officials for staff.”
On Jan. 21, the city council will hold a workshop for the Capital Improvements Plan and a public input session Jan. 28.
Budget meetings will start Jan. 31 and continue until Feb. 11. The final budget hearing and adoption will take place April 8.
Goodenow went through a summary of revenues for Ames, with 39.6% coming from charges for services, which is “largely made up of utilities.”
“The grand total revenue is just over $3.5 to $3 million,” Goodenow said. “Pretty significant budget for a city this size. We do not include the hospital, although that is a component of the city’s finances, but we don’t traditionally budget for it.”
Regarding spending, the two major categories are utilities, with a total of 30.6% and capital improvement investments making up 26.1%.
In terms of how the city comes up with its property tax rates, it uses three tax levies provided by the state of Iowa. Per the $1,000 valuation, the general fund levy starts at $8.37 but is reduced by the local option sales tax reduction by $2.02. The following levy is the transit levy, which supports CyRide and is about $0.60 but reduced by the state replacement tax to $0.59. The debt service levy requirement is $3.46 but is reduced by the state replacement tax and extra funding from the city to total $3.28.
“If you had a home that was assessed at $100,000, each year the state applies a rollback number,” Goodenow said. “For the first time in a number of years, the rollback decreased significantly by about 8%… instead of paying for 56% of the value of the property, it was reduced to 46%.”
The top three services most funded by tax collections include street and traffic, police protection and fire protection.
“The council works very hard to keep and mitigate the property tax increase to the citizens as low as possible, and also the fees and charges we have,” Schainker said. “How do they do that? Your property taxes are calculated by taking your assessed valuation times a tax rate; the local tax rate is controlled by the city council. So as your assessed value goes up, the council mitigates that by reducing the tax rate.”
The meeting then opened up to questions and feedback from the public about capital improvements for the city of Ames they would like to see in the budget.
Some of the requests were regarding increasing police protection and rental inspections, background checks for host families, lowering transportation costs, animal control and garbage collection methods.
The most requested was improvements in homelessness, with four audience members mentioning the issue and expressing concern.
“I was going to request a comprehensive plan for the city to really address its unhoused population,” Kate Gregory, an Ames resident, said in the audience. “I hope that plan will really engage all the service providers in our community because there’s a growing number of them.”
Assistant City Manager Pa Goldbeck said she has convened some of the service providers already on the subject.
“We have a request for proposal out now to hire a consultant to help us do this and to develop a county-wide plan, and so that’s coming as well,” Goldbeck said.
For more information, visit the city of Ames finance page. Any additional requests or comments about the budget may be directed to [email protected].
