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Santa Fe council reviews preliminary FY2025–26 budget, revenue rate and department requests
Summary
City staff presented a draft FY2025–26 budget and department requests, highlighting assumptions about the voter-approval revenue rate, an adjusted debt rate and a set of department asks that staff will verify with departments before finalizing.
City of Santa Fe officials reviewed a preliminary fiscal-year 2025–26 budget at a special council meeting on May 8, 2025, as staff presented department requests and updated revenue assumptions.
Budget staffer Rudy said this was the third budget meeting and described the packet as a working draft with versioned changes staff will circulate after the meeting. He said the packet shows an updated approximation of the city’s debt rate, and that staff modeled the revenue outlook both at the voter-approval rate and at the city’s new revenue rate.
Rudy said the debt rate is expected to fall over time as existing debt is paid down and that staff modeled an option that shifts some property-tax burden from the debt rate onto the maintenance-and-operations (M&O) rate so a typical taxpayer would see a net-zero change in the example used. He also said benefits and payroll adjustments are included in the package; he cited a benefits-and-payroll figure of $521,760 in the discussion.
On department requests, Rudy said each department’s asks are listed on a department-requests tab and that one-time costs include information on how they are offset on the revenue side. He summarized the total of the department-submitted increases as “96,000, 380,” and said staff estimates that amount represents about 0.9% of the budget; he stressed these figures remain subject to verification with each department.
Council members asked clarifying questions about line-item presentation and object-code usage, how payroll and benefits are reflected, and how capital projects and lease payments appear in the packet. Rudy said some legacy account codes are retained for continuity and that he will sit down with each department to confirm numbers and narrative before subsequent budget drafts.
No formal budget adoption occurred; the meeting was an initial review and working discussion. Council scheduled further budget discussions and staff said updated draft versions with change notes will be sent to the council for review.
The meeting adjourned after the review and a short additional agenda item.
