The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly unanimously approved the fiscal year 2025 budget at its meeting on Tuesday, June 4. The new budget takes a directed philosophical approach to borough fiscal planning based on concurrent attention to the Anchorage Consumer Price Index (CPI).
The idea is to match the development of annual budgets with inflationary changes as described by the CPI. According to a press release from the office of Borough Mayor Peter Micciche, “This FY2025 budget is a continued, everyday effort to manage costs at or below cost-of-living increases over time.”
“…it’s a responsibility when you put the burden of taxes, and you put yourself in a taxpayer’s shoes, and you think about that impact on every family in the borough,” said Mayor Micche. “That’s how you create your fiscal discipline, and our fiscal discipline essentially is this where we know how much we can spend because we’re going to only increase by CPI, the consumer price index. That’s real inflation over time.”
As evidence of the vectored approach, The 2.5% increase in the FY 25 borough budget and the 2.57% increase in FY2024 comes in below the 9.6% inflationary increase in the CPI over the same time frame.
According to the Mayor, this approach sets aside needless haggling in the budgeting process and keeps taxpayer burdens at the forefront of the discussion. “…directors used to fight for additional funding when they weren’t aligned behind a fiscal discipline, CPI-based budget philosophy. Now that they are, you don’t see that competition. We know that’s the most we can spend; we prioritize together as a team and put the taxpayer first every time.”
The new budget outlines $178 million in revenue and $180 million in expenditures, including $56 million designated for the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District.
