Fresno has officially closed a $50 million shortfall and will have a balanced budget heading into the upcoming fiscal year.
The Fresno City Council unanimously approved the $2.4 billion budget on Tuesday.
The backstory: Fresno faced a budget deficit of over $50 million with lower revenues coming in, higher expenditures and the lack of one-time funding sources, such as the CARES Act, the American Rescue Plan Act and the Emergency Rental Assistance Program.
- Mayor Jerry Dyer proposed that all departments maintain an attrition rate of 6.18% and asked most departments to cut their budgets by 5%.
- With that plan in place, the city council then made 82 motions to the budget to craft it with their interests, which totaled $55 million.
The big picture: Fresno’s Fiscal Year 2025-2026 budget totals $2.36 million, including $513 million in the general fund.
- The Dyer administration was able to either fully fund or partially fund 47 of the council’s budget motions, totaling $14.8 million. That is broken down into $4.895 million funded from the general fund, $95,000 from district funds, $9.7 million from grants or special revenue and $181,000 funded with enterprise funds.
- Dyer said 10 other motions were considered budget neutral and were included in the final budget. Eight additional motions were approved for funding as part of the Pave Now, Pay Later program. Three more motions will be considered at the mid-year budget review based on funding availability.
- The city was unable to advance 12 of the motions, and two other motions were withdrawn by the council.
Zoom in: The budget adds four police officers to the Fresno Area Express (FAX) team that are funded with enterprise dollars.
- The budget also supports the construction of a 911 center, Fire Station 12, a fire training center, a crisis response team for the Marjaree Mason Center, a new helicopter for the police department and other projects.
What they’re saying: “Even though we were fiscally challenged throughout, I think we were able to fund a lot of projects from parks, facilities, street improvements, beautification efforts, as well as a number of programs and nonprofits,” Dyer said.
- He added, “We weren’t able to meet all the needs of this council, but we were able to meet the vast majority of them.”
