Emporia City Commissioners had several appropriations to consider for the 2025 budget during their recent study session Friday morning.
In total, this year’s budget requests, spread across four separate city funds, total better than $2 million with the largest impact coming to the city’s general fund according to City Treasurer Janet Harouff.
Harouff also noted Friday that the city’s special alcohol tax fund, which has more than $130,000 in asks this year, will be depleted by the year 2029 based on current data. Harouff says the cause of that depletion is an increase in the requests. She says alcohol sales have been on an upward trend as of late, however, that increase is not large enough to meet the demand of the requests coming to the city on an annual basis.
While they did spend a lengthy amount of time debating appropriations for the 2025 budget, commissioners made no formal decisions on the matter Friday.
In other study business, commissioners received an update from the city’s homelessness advisory board. The board submitted a request asking commissioners to consider a financial contribution to support its work which was approved with commissioners granting an amount not to exceed $15,000.
City Director of Special Projects Tayler Wash says this will allow the board to pursue grant funding for a number of endeavors. One of those endeavors could be the addition of a full-time staff position to handle some of the workload of the board.
One item the commission was not ready to move forward on was the possible construction of an Emporia homeless shelter. Commissioners are not opposed to the idea, however, as Wash explained they feel there is more groundwork needed before a foundation for such a facility can be laid.
Prior to their study meeting, commissioners held their regular action session where infrastructure matters were the main focus. Among the items presented, and ultimately approved, was a change order for the annual street rehabilitation project.
The change order approved the addition of several brick streets to the project. The list of streets includes:
10th Avenue (Mechanic to Market)
10th Avenue (Market to Union)
11th Avenue (Mechanic to Market)
Another change order for the Peyton Street project was also approved as was the rejection of stormwater pond improvement bids which came in well over the project engineer’s original estimates. The 2024 asphalt preservation project contract was also awarded to Harbour Construction, LLC for better than $230,800 with a construction contract for a medium-intensity taxiway light project for $442,644.25 being awarded to Phillips Southern Electric Company.
Commissioners also approved tax abatement status for the Emporia Gazette Collective development in downtown Emporia following a brief public hearing. At the start of the meeting commissioners also presented a pair of proclamations, the first recognizing the month of June as Pride Month in the city of Emporia and the second acknowledging the month of June as Zoo Month.
The Emporia City Commission will next convene on Wednesday, June 18 at 11 am inside of the Municipal Courtroom at White Auditorium.
