The Hermiston City Council approved Monday night a $109,564,064 budget for the city’s 2024-25 fiscal year.
The budget is approximately $26.3 million (19.3 percent) less than the city’s FY2023-24 budget.
The smaller budget is primarily due to completion of several large capital projects.
The 2024-25 budget for the city’s General Fund is $19,801,846. That fund is dedicated to some of the city’s most basic operations, as well as quality-of-life services. Funding for the police, finance, planning, library and parks and recreation departments all come from the General Fund.
The new General Fund budget is $2.6 million or 15 percent larger than the previous budget.
Funding for nearly half of that increase – $1.2 million – will come from Good Shepherd Health Care System to pay for four new officers. Good Shepherd made the request for officers to increase its security level. The new officers will allow Good Shepherd to add one more position to each shift that will be assigned to the hospital. The agreement is similar to the city’s agreement with the Hermiston School District for school resource officers.
“We were pretty excited about that,” City Manager Byron Smith said. “We’re already working on the challenge of finding officers to fill those positions.”
The 2024-25 budget also includes a 3-percent pay increase for all city employees.
Councilor Roy Barron thanked the city’s Budget Committee, particularly members of the public who serve on it.
“They asked some really, really good questions,” Barron said. “They came prepared. The city staff had lots of options and recommendations.”
Hermiston Mayor Dave Drotzmann said it was beneficial to have veteran committee members “who have seen the process evolve. And we had a pretty in-depth conversation throughout the year about the budget.”
