Council gets first look at FY2023 budget; workshop sessions continue March 30

posted on 3/25/2022

The City Manager presented the proposed fiscal year 2023 budget to the City Council at its March 23 meeting.

In the following weeks, beginning next Wednesday, March 30, the City Council will hold budget workshops to receive detailed departmental budget requests. On March 30, the City Council will receive presentations from the School, Executive, Finance, Planning, and Information Technology departments. The complete budget workshop schedule is listed below.

The proposed budget for fiscal year 2023 submitted to the Council by City Manager J. Michael Joyal, Jr., is $180,987,528 across all funds, an increase over the previous year of $18,134,646, or 11.1%. The General Fund portion of the budget, funded primarily through property taxes, is $141,057,001, an increase over the previous year of $10,542,897, or 8.1%. As proposed, the city portion of the budget is $100,000 under the provisions of the tax cap; the school portion of the budget is $4.3 million over the tax cap. In total, the proposed budget is $4.2 million above the estimated tax cap. For the Council to adopt the budget as presented would require a two-thirds affirmative vote instead of a simple majority.

FY2023 Budget Revealed web resource and email newsletter

A video of the City Manager’s budget presentation and accompanying presentation slides are available on the FY2023 Budget Revealed page. The page also includes links to the proposed budget, budget summary and budget narrative. As the budget season progresses, videos of future budget workshops and meetings will also be added to the page, along with accompanying documents. Videos of School Board budget workshops and meetings are also included on the page as well as School Department budget documents.

The city will also email regular updates on the budget process in its Budget Revealed newsletter. To sign-up for these updates, visit https://bit.ly/dovernewsletters and add “Budget Revealed” to your current email subscription list.

FY2023 City Council budget schedule

All meetings/workshops below occur on Wednesdays.

• March 30 at 7 p.m. - Budget workshop - Presentations by School, Executive, Finance, Planning, and Information Technology departments
• April 6 at 7 p.m. - Budget workshop - Presentations by Welfare, Library, Recreation and Community Services departments
• April 13 at 7 p.m. - Regular meeting - School Department budget public hearing
• April 20 at 7 p.m. - Special meeting - Citywide budget public hearing
• April 20 - Immediately following special meeting - Presentations by Fire and Police departments
• May 4 at 6 p.m. - Budget workshop - General budget review
• May 4 - Immediately following budget workshop - Special meeting - Budget adoption
• May 11 at 7 p.m. - Regular meeting - Fallback budget adoption date