Atlanta City Council approves $2.75 billion budget for fiscal year 2025 | Georgia

(The Center Square) — The Atlanta City Council unanimously approved a budget of more than $2.7 billion for fiscal year 2025, which officials called “historic.”

The spending plan, adopted as the city grappled with a series Ruptures of water pipes, is approximately 8.8 % more than the budget for the 2024 financial year adopted by the Council and approximately 9.2 % more than the actual budget of the 2023 financial year.

The budget for the year 2025 includes a general fund of $ 853.8 million, an increase of approximately 8 % compared to the budget adopted for the financial year 2024, but a decrease of approximately 3.8 % compared to at actual expenses for the year 2023. It also includes more than $ 1.5 billion in works funds, which include fundraising and water and wastewater income funds, and 352 .5 million dollars from five “other” funds, including the hotel/motel tax fund.

The budget includes $306.3 million for the city’s police department. The city’s general fund finances almost 84.2 % – about $ 257.8 million – from the department’s budget, airport income and emergency telephone funds covering the rest.

The police budget represents an increase of 3.9 % compared to the budget adopted for the financial year 2024 and an increase of 13.2 % compared to the real expenses of the city in matters of the police during the financial year 202222 The budget increases the number of full-time equivalent police department employees from 102 to 2,809.

Repairing the aging infrastructure of the city will probably remain a hot topic after the ruptures of water pipes that have paralyzed the Georgian capital for several days. The budget includes a roughly 13.3 percent budget increase for the city’s Watershed Management Department.

Unrelated to the breaks, Atlanta voters last month approved a 1-cent sales tax on most goods purchased and services rendered in the city. Sales tax proceeds from the municipal option will help pay for the Combined Sewer Overflow Consent Decree and Sanitary Sewer Overflow Consent Decree issued in 1998 and 1999, which require the city to make water and sewer improvements.

Atlanta voters approved Most for the first time in July 2004 and renewed it every four years since its initial adoption. Since October 2004, MOST has generated more than $1.8 billion.