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Levan council reviews tentative 2025 budget, proposes staff cost‑of‑living increase and small raise for administrative employee
Summary
At a June 12 work session the Levan Town Council reviewed its tentative 2025 budget, noted the general fund is running well below its appropriation, discussed higher insurance and litigation costs, reported progress on a new electrical substation and considered modest staff pay increases and funding options for the town rodeo. The council will vote on the budget June 26.
Levan — The Levan Town Council met in a June 12 work session to review its tentative 2025 budget, hear updates on infrastructure projects and consider personnel and community event funding before a planned June 26 vote.
Speaker 2 opened the session and noted the meeting’s purpose: “We need to call to order our work session for June 12, 2025.” Staff walked council members through a packet marked with recent adjustments. Speaker 1 said some line items had been mis‑categorized in the accounting system and used the highlighted packet pages to explain why particular lines appear over budget.
The council was told the general fund is well under its adopted appropriation for the year. “We thought we’d get grants and we didn’t get grants,” Speaker 1 said, explaining that planned grant revenues and related expenditures that did not materialize account for part of the variance. Speaker 1 cited an example showing an adopted general‑fund appropriation of about $802,000 versus $416,000 spent to date.
Council members discussed enterprise funds (water, electric, gas) and were reminded these funds are managed like businesses and are not held to the same balancing rules as the general fund. Speaker 1 said the electric fund ran over on some items because of substation work and that litigation exposure has been increased in the next year’s draft budget.
On infrastructure, Speaker 2 provided a status update on the town’s new electrical substation, saying, “They estimated that the substation should cost about $350,000,” and reported the project is nearly complete. Council members also described a previously leased transformer that was returned and installed from surplus inventory.
On personnel, Speaker 1 proposed a 2.5% cost‑of‑living increase for all employees and recommended a modest raise for an administrative employee: “she’s only making $14 an hour right now,” Speaker 1 said. The council did not finalize pay decisions at the work session but discussed absorbing modest increases given current under‑expenditure in the general fund.
Insurance costs were singled out as a driver of higher expenses: staff said they budgeted about a 13% increase in insurance premiums to provide cushion against a roughly 12–14% rise they have seen.
Members also discussed funding for community events, including the rodeo. The current rodeo line item is $5,000; councilmembers debated whether to increase that amount, pay a contractor to run the event, or rely on donations and entry fees. Speakers emphasized the heavy workload required to run the rodeo and the need to find a contractor or volunteer organizer. Local contractors and individuals (including someone named Tate) were mentioned as possible resources to consult about operations and arena maintenance.
On the budget schedule, Speaker 1 said the tentative budget would be fine‑tuned and brought back for approval on June 26. The session closed after a motion to conclude the work session; Speaker 3 seconded and the motion carried by voice vote.
Next steps: council staff will update the tentative budget to reflect final adjustments discussed at the work session and present the budget for council action at the regular meeting scheduled for June 26, 2025.
