Hastings staff outline draft 2025-26 budget and how new state property-tax limits affect future asks

At a July work session, Hastings city staff presented a first draft of the 2025-26 budget and warned that new state laws limit how much the city can increase property-tax requests in future years. The presentation explained the budget assumptions and the consequences of the recently enacted Property Tax Growth Limitation Act.

The draft keeps the city’s current levy unchanged and, under staff assumptions of a 10% increase in valuation and 2% growth, proposes a tax asking of just under $9.3 million. Staff said the statutory cap without exceptions would be about $9.472 million under those assumptions.

Why this matters: new state legislation changes how unused tax authority carries forward and creates a separate exception category for public-safety spending. That alters multi-year planning because a municipality that does not use its full authority in one year can lose…