Dayton City Manager Shelley Dickstein said the city’s 2023 budget addresses community, organizational and city commission priorities.
“In my time in the organization, this is the most robust budget of community investments that we’ve ever had,” she said.
According to City Manager Dickstein’s February blog, the city’s nearly $213 million general fund operating budget includes more than $60 million for the police department and more than $47 million for the fire department.
The budget also includes more than $18 million for road improvements and more than $17 million for investments in water, sewer and stormwater projects.
Dayton also plans to use some of its $138 million in federal COVID relief funds to upgrade city parks ($7.4 million), improve housing conditions ($18 million) and remove blighted structures and stabilize neighborhoods ($22 million).
The City Commission unanimously approved the 2023 full-year appropriations on Wednesday, which follows weeks of budget and spending discussions.
Commissioners Darryl Fairchild and Shenise Turner-Sloss had said the budget did not reflect their priorities or the priorities of the people who elected them.
Turner-Sloss and Fairchild in December said they would abstain from voting for the 2023 budget partly because they were not given adequate time to review the spending proposal.
The commission approved a temporary 2023 budget, but the full-year budget was not approved until Wednesday.
Turner-Sloss said the city’s budget process hopefully will begin earlier in the year than it has in the past to provide better transparency and more time for the public to review the city’s spending plans.
Turner-Sloss said she also wants the city to host seven public hearings to get the community’s feedback and incorporate that into the budget.
She and Fairchild also said one of area of concern — funding levels for the Human Relations Council — hopefully will be addressed during a mid-year review.
“There were times where it was said that I wasn’t going to vote for the budget just because I didn’t get what I wanted — and I don’t think that was particularly fair,” said Commissioner Fairchild. “I want to let people know I will vote for this budget because there are a lot of things that are important that move us forward and it’s a good-faith step to working on some of these items that are outstanding.”
Dickstein said she will soon issue a memo that lays out a recommended timeline and processes for the next budget cycle (2024).
Dickstein said she is “very proud” of the 2023 budget, which she claims is responsive to the vast majority of priorities from the community, the city organization and the city commission.
Dayton Mayor Jeffrey Mims Jr. on Wednesday said the city does not have enough money to pay for everything the members of the city commission would like to fund.
“Everything that I want is not in this budget,” Mims said. “I wish we had enough money to bring back Madden Golf Course ... but the dollars are not there to make it happen.”
But Mims said the city’s budget contains a lot of important investments and the city continues to see many successes.
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