On Wednesday, June 25, Burlington City Council unanimously approved Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak's balanced FY26 budget, a budget that centers affordability by reducing overall property taxes for most residents. This year’s budget also closed a $9.8M gap, while making strategic investments in community safety and housing.
Vermont Business Magazine Last night, at a Special City Council Meeting, the Burlington City Council unanimously approved the $107.1 million FY26 budget. Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak and CAO Katherine Schad presented a balanced budget with a continued commitment to affordability, shrinking the structural budget gap, responsible fiscal stewardship, and strategic investments in community safety and housing.
There are various factors that contributed to this year’s $9.8M gap, such as the end of one-time, COVID-related federal funding, continued rise of personnel and operation costs due to a City government that has been growing steadily over the last ten years, cost of living adjustments, increased healthcare premiums, and inflation. The City has also experienced less-than-projected gross receipts revenues, tax revenue not increasing despite assed values increasing during reappraisals, and spending restrictions for revenue generated from 14 splinter taxes.
Burlington residents have been sounding the alarm that the City is becoming increasingly unaffordable. The Mayor retains her commitment to prioritizing equitable budgeting practices and policy changes to make the City more affordable. Though this year's $9.8M gap is smaller than the $14.2M gap the administration faced last year, there were fewer options to close the gap for FY26.
See the Mayor’s solutions to closing the FY26 budget gap below:
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Solutions to Close the $9.8 million Budget Gap
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Category
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Total Dollar Amount
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Components
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Additional Revenue
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$3.0M
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$1.7M growth in Grand List; additional $0.01 public safety tax (already approved by voters March 2024); additional $0.0053 on Parks + Highway Tax; $280k remaining ARPA; additional anticipated revenue from local option tax revenue due to recent change in law;
updated franchise fee assumptions |
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Additional Anticipated Revenue
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$930,000
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Conservative estimates for: additional permit fees in FY26; Anticipated Gross Receipts for hotel coming online summer 2025; increased enforcement of code violations with increased fees per new ordinance; anticipated additional PILOTs; unrealized gain/loss,
interdepartmental interest on pooled cash, and investment income |
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ModernGov Efficiencies
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$2.0M
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Projecting $750k in additional revenue collected; efficiencies of merging departments
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Service Inventory Reductions
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$2.5M
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Winding down certain programs (listed below)
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Pause in hiring certain positions until later in FY
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$135,000
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Pause on a position in CA Office until Q3; pause on new Senior Advisor on Housing until Q4
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No COLA for Mayor this year or for Dep’t Heads for 6 mos
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$37,000
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Departmental savings, cuts, or contributions to GF
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$1.6M
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Includes adjusting new sworn officer head count in budget due to hiring realities; software savings in I&T, additional contribution by BED to GF for legal and HR assistance, revenue from increasing fees to Uber/Lyft
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Total
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$10.2M
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Combination of Reductions and Additional Revenue
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- A balanced budget that is a decrease over last year’s budget and which centers affordability
- Coupled with an education tax decrease, this means most residents will see a net decrease in their property taxes this year
- Continued reduction of reliance on one-time funds for ongoing obligations
- Strategic investments in community health and safety, including significantly increasing our investment in the Howard Center Street Outreach program and continued investments in improving community health and safety through the work of the Mayor’s Senior Advisor on Community Safety and Special Assistant on Overdose Prevention Center Implementation
- Strategic investments in housing including continuing to fund the Special Assistant to End Homelessness position originally created with one-time funds and now permanently funded to assist us in our City response to homelessness and creating a new position within CEDO to lead the creation of an innovative strategy for housing production of all types within the City
- Expansion of ratepayer affordability programs for both our municipal electric and water utilities
- Fully funds an Adult Recreation Specialist position which supports, in part, senior programming, and $50,000 to support senior programming needs
- Reduction of the workforce in strategic ways to create more consistency in manager/employee ratios, centralization of core financial services within one department, and reduction in certain programs
- Continued work to modernize and right-size city government through the ModernGov Initiative and application of a first-of-its kind city-wide service inventory
What comes next:
- Implementation of proactive budgeting practices for FY26, FY27, and beyond
- Examining both the Operational Efficiency Study, the User Fee Study and other studies to determine what more can be done with modernizing City government and ensuring fees align with costs, respectively
- Collecting outstanding fees owed to the City and making sure we are effectively enforcing our housing code
- Creating fair and transparent processes for our regional programs Working with City staff to seek outside funding sources through grants while avoiding seeking one-time funding for ongoing needs
- Examining whether we need to move away from a self-insured healthcare model
- Beginning to create multi-year budget planning models so we can better forecast and plan for the City and it’s needs, including when we need to raise revenue through municipal tax increases and/or utility rate increases and the coordination of bonding and debt service payments
BURLINGTON, Vt. – 6.25.2025
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