City Comptroller Erika Thomas presents both her department budget and a review of the overall city budget to the city council during Monday’s meeting. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

Jamestown’s problems hiring new police officers isn’t saving the city as much money as one would have thought.

During city budget discussions this week, City Councilman Jeff Russell, R-At Large, asked if there are savings in the 2025 budget from the city budgeting for police officers it hasn’t been able to hire. If the money has not been spent it would be in the general fund, said Erika Thomas, city comptroller, who added it has most likely been used for other things. It was found in the budget that $4.5 million of the budgeted $6.6 million for police staffing was used.

Thomas began with the overall city budget, beginning with highlights including a reduction in revenues due to the lack of ARPA funding going forward, and the temporary municipal aid that was included in the 2025 budget was for the second year of two, so that is no longer in the budget either.

“We have a two percent increase in the sales tax in the budget right now,” Thomas said. “That’s two percent over the 2025 budget. I looked over the weekend and the September sales tax numbers are not published yet, I hope to have something in the first week of November so I know where that comes in.”

Thomas continued with the fact that there is no discretionary capital spending in the 2026 budget, except for CHIPS and the tree inventory. The budget does include some funds for the HVAC system, which Thomas said is something that has a band aid on it as of right now.

Thomas then discussed some salary increases negotiated through union contracts, along with health insurance projections. The numbers for the health insurance come from August, and Thomas said the number is an almost 15% increase.

“We are working on that,” Thomas said. “We have had some meetings and our last meeting with CPA Vendor was Friday so now we just have to go through the analysis of everybody’s proposals to see what we want, who we’re going to pick, and where it’s going to land and what the impact is on the 2026 budget.”

Thomas noted that like last year retirement rates have increased, this time from 1.2 to 4.2 percentage points, which then translates to a 5.3% to 17.3% increase in rates. The 2026 retirement rates for Tier Six are up 51% compared to 2024. She added that this is a huge number and while she did not know how that is calculated she had heard some things such as an addition for disability when it comes to police and fire.

Thomas gave a summary of city revenues and expenses, which is seeing an increase in appropriations and a decrease in revenues. She noted that the fund balance draw is an increase of $2.5 million. Thomas also discussed sales tax and property tax history, along with a summary of the appropriations for the year, including the increases in health insurance, public works, police, the decrease in fire, along with other employee benefits, parks, debt service which is down, general administration, capital, and other expenses.

The rest of Thomas’s presentation on the overall budget included more health insurance discussions, along with a break down of the payroll, property insurance, and the fringes such as retirement, health, dental, social security, worker’s comp, unemployment, the medicare advantage premium, and a bit on the retirement rate history for police and fire department employees. Retirement was noted to be a big expense.

The council then briefly discussed if it would be possible to send out a pie chart in the mail to city residents detailing the budget and what the money is being used for where. This is something it was noted that used to be done, and that the cost that it would be to include that in the mail with the tax bill would be around $2,000. It was also suggested to draft one and put it on the website or social media, in order to provide more transparency on where the money is going, and avoid the cost of putting it in the mail.

Thomas then moved onto the budget for her own department, looking at retirement for her specific department, payroll, accounting software, professional fees which have increased, audit fees and capital fees are also increasing, along with a few other increases in different areas.

“One thing to note, my department is only four people and they have all told me they are able to retire by the next mayoral election,” Thomas said. “So it’s pretty scary to me to have that kind of turnover, especially because there’s a lot of payroll expertise and insurance.”