Kenai’s proposed operating budget shows an increase in budget and revenues for Fiscal Year 2016.
The mill rate will remain the same but across all funds the budget will increase by around $50,000, to $25.7 million, much of which are healthcare costs.
Koch: “We had an increase of 20.75% on healthcare and this year’s premium is 1.44 million and so you put that twenty percent on that, $280,000 across all of the funds is healthcare.”
City Manager Rick Koch said another chunk of that is a 1.4% Cost of Living Adjustment for Personnel but with those increases the city spent far less in other departments.
Projected sales tax for Kenai is shown at increasing by almost $90,000 while property taxes for 2016 are projected to increase by around $142,000.
Koch: “I haven’t quite got my arms around the sales tax side but property tax is a function out of the borough’s calculating that but on the sales tax side, we’ve had two really, extremely strong quarters this year, July through September and then October through December. We saw increases of roughly 4% in that first quarter and over 10% in the second quarter.”
Overall Kenai’s projected revenues show a substantial increase over last year’s and the fund balance is increasing.