Following the Money Part Five C - Fee increases and some tidbits

2025 budget wrap up

Photo by Pepi Stojanovski on Unsplash

The City Council approved the 2025 budget at their October 15 meeting. I started this Following the Money series to give you some smaller bites of insight into how the city runs. I know it’s a boring topic for many but it affects your life on a daily basis. As we move forward I now have a collection of information I can link back to when a new topic appears which could be handy! So let’s finish this out with the final piece of the budget puzzle, fee increases, plus some tidbits I picked up that I thought might be of interest to some of you.

A shoutout to City Administrator Doelling for providing me with additional information above and beyond what I was asking for.

TIDBITS

THE GREAT OUTDOORS WATER PARK BOND

The voters approved bonding to construct this city amenity. I asked Administrator Doelling for information about it. Her reply, “This series of bonds was issued in 2016 with an original issuance amount of $8,265,000 and will be paid off in 2026. The bonds are funded through a property tax dedicated to servicing the debt and received an AA+ rating from Standard & Poor's. Our annual payment is roughly $1M/year.”

THE POLICE AND FIRE STATION BONDS

Since I was already asking about bonds I added a few questions about the police station on 111th and the two fire stations, one on 111th and the other near Exempla Hospital. These types of bonds require voter approval.

In 1998 a bond was issued for fire station #1 on 111th. In 2005 a bond was issued for the police station. Exempla donated the land for fire station #2, the city created a special improvement district with the property owners in the district paying a portion of the cost, and used $1M in fund balance.

FEE INCREASES

WASTE COLLECTION

When the city signed the new contract with Republic Services it included an annual increase. For the average customer with a 64-gallon trash can the cost increase is a dollar a month.

WATER RELATED FEES

• water reclamation fees

  9% increase or approximately $3.57 a month

• stormwater fees

  5% or approximately $0.63 a month

• water fees

  21% increase in water fees for 2025 approved by the city council in the 2024 budget. This was coupled with a 21% increase for 2024.

EMS FEES

This is interesting. In Following the Money - Part Five B: What's going out in 2025 I wrote about city staff’s work to examine current fees and determine if they needed to be increased. EMS fees were on the list. Staff reported that the fees were last updated in 2014 that the current cost is about $3200 and we charge about $900. Staff was planning to check to see what other communities charged and bring fee updates to the council at their final budget meeting.

When I looked at the staff report for that final meeting there was no mention of the EMS fees. Hmm what’s the deal here? I asked Administrator Doelling. Her answer was surprising. Those 2014 fee increases? They were approved by council but never put into place. They were close to what staff was going to recommend so they didn’t need approval again, just implementation. (insert eye roll here, I don’t know why this wasn’t done). Staff informed council of this during the meeting.

I asked if there was a way to total lost revenue. That hasn’t been determined but staff is anticipating around $100K more next year with the adjustment to the rate structure.

BLS (basic life support) - current $600 --> $800

40% of calls

These are your more minor injuries, broken bones, etc.  

ALS (advanced life support) - current $900 --> $1,100    

58% of calls

Includes but not limited to:

•             Administration of a medication.

•             Evaluation of an EKG.

•             Advanced skill such as infusion or advanced airway management

ALS2 - current $1,000 --> $1,100 

2% of calls

This is reserved for cardiac arrests, multi-system trauma, and burn victims; basically those that are critically ill or injured.

WHAT SURROUNDING COMMUNITIES CHARGE

GOLF FEES

The summer prime rate is increasing by $7/round in 2025. Here’s the current fee chart.

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