Creation of Joplin City budget is a step by step process, City Finance Director says

The Joplin City Council has released preliminary figures for the city's Fiscal 2027 budget.

On Monday, August 24th at 6 p.m. the City Council will discuss the budget during a public hearing in City Council chambers. The public is invited to attend/

It will be a key step - but just one of many steps - in formulating the final budget for Joplin.

Not everyone knows how the City of Joplin goes about crafting its budget.

Who is involved? What are the steps?

Leslie Haase is the Finance Director for the city. She is deeply involved in the budget process.

"Developing our budget is actually about a six month process," Haase says. "We start building the payroll budget, but at the same time the departments are building their operations and capital budget. Then, the Finance department builds the revenue budget."

She says the first step is developing the key initiatives - the things that the departments want to accomplish in the upcoming year on top of the regular work that they do. That is done in May.

Haase says the upcoming Fiscal 2027 budget may reveal some changes from the previous years. She says capital spending will drop from $65M to $51M as grant projects end.

However, core services will continue to be funded.

The public hearing will invite citizen input.

After that, Council work sessions, slated for September 22-23, will review the issues.

Final adoption is expected in October.

One feature of this year's budget is ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) and grants.

ARPA is $1.9 trillion federal economic stimulus bill passed in March 2021 to aid in post-pandemic recovery.

ARPA funds are used for one-time improvements only.

"ARPA has been transformational for this city," Haase state. "When the state and the county got ARPA dollars and we had some opportunities to leverage our direct ARPA award with some of our special sales taxes that the voters have approved to apply for grants from the state and the county to make those dollars go further.

"So we have done $69 million worth of projects and received over $41.7 million in grant money and that has been propping up our budget," she adds.

Crafting the city budget is a methodical process.

It involves extensive work and review by city employees, public input and more.

"We still have work to do," Haase says.

The proposed budget is available on the City of Joplin website.