Fiscal Year 2026 Budget

Budget Introduction

During the May 21 Budget and Finance Committee meeting, staff presented the budget process. Staff provided an overview of municipal budgeting and some of the basic terms involved. This is a great, short document for an introduction to our budget process.

Budget Presentations

Throughout May and June, departments will attend weekly Wednesday City Council Budget and Finance Committee meetings and present their requests for fiscal year 2026. This Engage Missoula page will be updated after each week's department presentations, with links to the summary presentation. For those who wish to diver deeper, detailed documents will be posted on our main website for that week's meeting.

Budget Process and Adoption

The City's charter says that the mayor present a budget to City Council. The City Council can adopt amendments to the budget, then adopts the budget and levies the necessary taxes and sets fees for service. Mayor Davis will be presenting her Executive Budget on July 21. This budget will include the department requests she wants to fund and will highlight the cost-saving measures she's directed staff to take.

After the mayor presents her budget, City Council members may submit proposed budget amendments. Council members may want to include department requests not included in the mayor's budget, remove requests that were included in the mayor's budget, or propose other new requests. The Budget and Finance Committee will consider and vote on each proposed amendment during their meetings on July 30 and August 6. City Council will vote on the full amended budget on August 11.

Getting Involved

This project on Engage Missoula will have high-level overviews of the budget and its process. More importantly, the tools on this page provide an interactive space for residents to bring questions for staff or share comments with elected officials, as a supplement to our public meetings.

Engage Missoula Tools

• Ask a question on this page: submit any questions you have below and your question and the answer will be posted on this page along with your user name.
• Comment on this page: select the comment tab and choose one of the options. Your comments will be forwarded to Mayor Davis and the City Council.
  • Leave a Comment - for any general comments about the budget.
  • Tell us how we can make the budget process easier - we want our budget process to be as transparent and easy to navigate as possible. If you have any suggestions for how we can improve, please let us know.
• Subscribe - click the subscribe button to be notified of updates on the budget.

Other Comment Opportunities

• See our Public Comments Page to find all the ways you can reach your elected officials. This includes meeting participation, email, phone, and online forms.