Mesa council adopts tentative 2025-26 budget 6-1 after public calls to delay

The Mesa City Council voted 6-1 on May 19 to adopt the city’s tentative fiscal 2025-26 budget, setting spending caps and moving the plan to the next stage of review.

The vote followed more than an hour of public comment in which residents urged the council to postpone adoption and ask staff for deeper spending cuts, citing rising debt and anticipated reductions in state and rental tax revenues.

Resident Kerry Davis told the council the budget’s full-time equivalent count rises to “approximately 4,800 employees,” an increase of 108 from the prior year, and said the city’s compensation spending rises by “almost $59,000,000,” from about $667,000,000 to $725,000,000. Resident Doreen Taylor, identifying herself as a constituent of District 2, urged council members to “please consider tabling the vote, sending it back for more consideration,” citing what she described as a roughly $40,000,000 reduction in revenues tied to sales-tax changes and shared-state revenue shifts.

Other speakers made…