2025 St. Cloud Operating Funds Budget Gets Green Light from City Council

(KNSI) — The St. Cloud City Council has given the thumbs up to the 2025 operating budget.

The budget and levy set the spending guidelines for the city’s operations.

The $89,808,200 price tag is 2.31% more than this year and amounts to an increase of about $2 million. The city collects $39.5 million of that in property taxes. The property tax levy is increasing by 1.34% due to growth. The overall tax rate remains unchanged, meaning if a home’s value doesn’t change, the city taxes should remain the same. Next year, 64% of property tax dollars will be spent on the needs of the police and fire departments, and 20% will go to public works projects. The rest of the overall budget comes from state and federal funds.

This is Mayor Dave Kleis’s final budget of his tenure, as he is retiring at the end of the year. He tells KNSI News he feels the administration has always been good stewards of the public’s money under his watch. “Of the 20 budgets that I have been fortunate to be able to bring to the city and to the city council, not one of them has ever had a single change at all in the dollar amount. So, that’s really a credit to our staff and the team that we put together.”

Kleis adds that the secret to getting the budgets passed each year is to listen to the people. “It has been really focusing on the priorities that the community has told us are the priorities, and I believe, are the core priorities, public safety and infrastructure and saying no to things that aren’t city responsibilities.”

The city insists on focusing on those core services. None of the budgets have ever included social services.

The $56.3 million 2025 enterprise funds budget will be presented at the December 16th council meeting for a public hearing, which is also when it will likely be adopted. The enterprise fund supports nine key areas not financed through property taxes: the Municipal Athletic Complex, River’s Edge Convention Center, parking system and ramps, sewer and water, streetlights, and garbage and recycling.

___