The Park City Council will adopt a tentative fiscal year 2027 budget Thursday.
The latest general fund revenue projection, which reflects the cost of running core city services, is $57.7 million. That’s compared to about $56.3 million for fiscal year 2026.
City Manager Adam Lenhard said the tentative budget is the first attempt at bringing a balanced proposal to the council.
“There's no property tax increase proposed with this, we're going to maintain our rate from the previous year overall,” he said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Wednesday. “I would say the city's fiscal health is still strong. We've budgeted conservatively.”
The tentative budget outlines operating requests from city departments as well as in-progress and future capital maintenance projects.
Lenhard said some items can’t be finalized yet. For example, he said sales tax reports are an important part of organizing budget projections and the March sales tax report isn’t ready.
“Normally, our March sales tax report wouldn't be as big of a concern,” he said. “But with the winter that we just had, we are anticipating that March's sales tax numbers are going to be down, and it's a question of how much.”
The report will be ready in the next two to three weeks.
The numbers will help determine how to adjust compensation plans for city staff. Lenhard said the city’s 2019 pay plan was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and never fully implemented.
“The goal is to ensure that the people who keep Park City running, our snow plow and transit drivers, our police officers, our planners or other administrative staff, that they can afford to stay here,” he said. “We've seen that the cost of replacing an experienced employee far outweighs a modest market-based adjustment.”
The tentative budget also proposes an adjustment for mayor and council salaries. According to the staff report, compensation packages for elected officials have remained largely static for several years, despite increasing job responsibilities and time demands.
Those compensation changes require a public hearing which is scheduled for May 21. The city said proposed increases would align salaries with peer organizations like Summit County.
Final budget adoption is scheduled for June 11.
