LONGVIEW, Texas — After several conversations in previous meetings, Longview City Council members approved the city's 2024-25 budget on Tuesday night with a few notable changes.
"One of the things that were changed from previous discussions were upon council recommendation, they removed all those one-time expenditures. But, one of the things they did was they actually restored funding for the Partners in Prevention division and the work that they do," City of Longview spokesperson Richard Yeakley said.
In the past meetings, councilmembers pulled back funds for Partners in Prevention to make the budget work. Partners in Prevention is a mentoring program run by the city of Longview that seeks to help young people grow up healthy, responsible and drug-free.
Community members like Melissa Cosper are grateful that the organization will continue to be funded.
"Excited for the community. I hope to be here at a city council meeting in another 30 years, listening the impact that the children that we're mentoring right now," Longview resident Melissa Cosper said.
The council listened to many representatives from the organization as they discussed the program’s community impact.
"I think the program and mentoring program has such long-term economic impact on our community. Being a part of the original group of girls that were mentoring in 1995 it just really, it really holds true to me because it changed the course of my family tree," Cosper said.
Another significant development is that street maintenance will be fully funded.
"At one point during the course of the budget season, we had talked about reducing street maintenance, but council had been very clear that they wanted to restore street maintenance to its normal levels," Yeakley said. "So reducing those one-time expenditures, all those one-off projects, allows some of the funding necessary to do things like restoring street maintenance, and then the Partners in Prevention spending."
The city announced they will not be increasing any fees, except for water and sewer rates. Yeakley said the main reason for this is to ensure the water system gets the maintenance it needs.
According to a previous budget presentation, the water and wastewater rates in the city of Longview have not increased in five years (since the 2019-20 budget year). For example, a typical residential bill for their combined water and wastewater bill would go from $42.70 to $44.15, which would be a 3.4% increase.
"So now that we have a plan, we know what next year looks like. We know starting Oct. 1, what we are empowered to do and how we can go out and serve the community, and so now we have that spending plan and we can move forward accordingly," Yeakley said.
The 2024-25 fiscal year will start Oct. 1, 2024 and run through Sept. 30, 2025.
During a meeting Wednesday, the city council will consider approving the tax rate of 56.19 cents per $100 valuation for the 2024-25 fiscal year. That special council is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. in City Hall.