Members of the Missoula City Council passed the City’s budget for the new fiscal year with few amendments.

In an extraordinarily tight budget year, this budget preserves services that Missoula residents need and want – fire protection, police services, street maintenance, clean and safe public parks, an abundant supply of drinking water, help for Missoula’s less fortunate residents and people in crisis and more. It also funds a few relatively newer services, such as the Mobile Support Team, which responds to people experiencing mental and behavioral health emergencies in the community.

The $276 million budget also provides $546,000 for a code reform project that aims to update and simplify City codes to facilitate new housing construction; $250,000 to support the City’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund; $964,000 for Operation Shelter initiatives, which provide services for people experiencing homelessness; a $479,000 loan to support architectural design and infrastructure construction on the Scott Street housing project, the largest affordable home ownership project in state history; and $75,000 for statewide advocacy and coalition-building for the 100% Clean Energy project.

The budget also makes significant infrastructure investments, including maintaining the City’s commitments to water system improvements totaling $19 million. The City is investing $10.3 million in its wastewater utility, including the largest non-export solar project in the state at the Wastewater Treatment Plant as a step toward accomplishing City climate goals. And the City has begun the Mullan Road area $23 million BUILD grant project that will improve the transportation network and provide for housing opportunities and enable the implementation of the Sxwtpqyen area master plan.

“If we had more resources, we’d be doing a lot more in a lot more areas,” Acting Mayor Gwen Jones said. “But we have limited resources, so we have to prioritize, and this year it is maintaining service levels and making sure our employees are paid enough so that we can retain them and honoring out collective bargaining agreements. Other than that, there’s not a lot of new things funded in this budget.”

This year’s budget requires an increase to City taxes of about 11.6 percent, adding about $44.99 per $100,000 of assessed value of a home. The state-assessed value differs from a home’s market value, running at about half of market value. City taxes are 30.4 percent of a property’s tax bill. Visit Missoula County iTax to research your tax bill.

City levies usually increase a few percentage points per year. During the past two budget years during the pandemic, the City reduced City levies by 0.02 percent last year and 0.23 percent the year before. In addition, inflation is a continuing challenge for the City, showing up in areas like fuel and labor costs.

For detailed information about the new budget, visit the City’s budget web page.