Bloomington City Council Approves 2024 Budget

Last night the City Council approved the $248 million city budget for 2024. This includes just over $131 million for the civil City, a combined $98 million for Utilities, Transit, and Housing Authority, and an additional $19 million in one-time appropriations from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and the former Community Revitalization and Enhancement District (CRED) funds. Excluding the one-time appropriations, the adopted 2024 budget is a 1.4% increase over 2023 and a nearly 1% decrease for civil City and the 3 authorities respectively, and including the one-time appropriations an overall increase of 7.6% from 2023.

Mayor Hamilton thanked the Council for their continued strong support for the transformational investments begun in 2023, noting that “this 2024 budget continues the major focus on meeting the challenges of the decade of the 2020s: addressing the climate emergency; investing in better and more jobs and a constantly improving quality of life including diversity, equity inclusion and belonging; advancing more affordable housing; and dealing with public health crises we’re experiencing.” 

Mayor Hamilton noted that through the six months of engagement with the Council on the budget, “we’ve brought forward a 2024 budget that maintains our 2023 momentum and also keeps our commitment to be an employer of choice for our people, assures public safety is strongly supported, and makes a series of critical one-time investments to sustain our strong and positive recovery from the pandemic and its recession.”

This 2024 budget includes:

• investments in the city workforce, including a 5% cost-of-living increase and a $500 recovery bonus for most non-union staff (with unionized staff receiving their negotiated rates); extending benefit increases in pensions, health savings accounts, paid family leave, continuing-education tuition supports, and health services including reimbursements for out-of-state reproductive health care; and the addition of 32 new full-time-equivalent positions;
• investments in public safety through increasing salaries for all sworn firefighters beyond the labor contract in place and for probationary police officers, as well as implementation of planned investment in the new public safety headquarters in Showers West and three major fire facilities;
• nearly $20 million in one-time investments in infrastructure, including additional funding for sidewalks, streets serving transit and bicycle routes, the federal Safe Streets for All program, traffic signal improvements; affordable housing; jobs and sustainability initiatives; diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging projects and programs; and public health.

After the Council voted to adopt the budget and personnel ordinances, Mayor Hamilton and Council members recognized and honored City Controller Jeff Underwood, who plans to retire at the end of the year, thanking him for his 25 years of service to the city and for developing and managing 14 annual city budgets as Controller, maintaining strong fiscal health while helping make unprecedented investments in our future. 

More information about the City’s 2024 budget is available at bloomington.in.gov/city/budget.