Belpre City Council reviews draft 2025 budget; flags police insurance change, auditing discrepancies and planned capital purchases

Belpre City Council met in a budget workshop to review the draft 2025 general fund budget and discuss several items that council members and staff said need follow-up, including a drop in police hospitalization costs after an insurance change, unexplained auditing-software differences, a requested increase in a community-center contract, and planned capital purchases such as two police cruisers and a heavy rescue vehicle.

The council and staff focused first on reconciling numbers in the draft budget. Staff reported differences between what was placed into the city’s accounting/auditing software and the figures that software produced, and that the gap totaled “a hundred thousand dollars plus,” according to a staff exchange during the meeting. That discrepancy touched multiple departments and prompted requests for further review of how accounting items are entered and how project and loan costs are tracked.

The meeting included repeated discussion of the police department’s employee benefits. Staff reported the hospitalization (insurance) line for the police changed substantially during the most recent update — from…