Butler City Council proposes bigger budget, no tax increase
The Butler City Council introduced its budget of $10,871,000 for the 2025 fiscal year.
A proposed ordinance to adopt the budget received its first reading Thursday evening, Nov. 21, alongside another ordinance proposal to leave the tax rate unchanged for the 2025 fiscal year.
The city can keep its tax rate flat, despite increased spending, due to proceeds from the recent sale of the Butler Area Sewer Authority.
BASA was sold to Pennsylvania American Water for $230 million. The sale was finalized late last month.
The city, along with Butler Township, evenly split the proceeds, after spending about $40 million of that money to pay off the authority’s debts and liabilities.
Butler controller Jeffery Snyder announced the city currently has just over $92 million in its general fund as a result of the BASA sale.
The city is working on setting up a trust for the proceeds.
“At this point the BASA proceeds are in the bank, safely earning interest, but they’re not at this time being aggressively invested. We have to set up the trust; we’re working on it right now,” Mayor Bob Dandoy said.
Butler Township recently passed a budget for the 2025 fiscal year with the same idea: an increased budget without raising any tax rates.
According to Councilman Don Shearer, $643,000 of the budget will be covered by proceeds from the BASA sale.
“The nice part about that is that is the interest that we will earn between now and the end of this year. So the interest that we are gaining from this year on BASA proceeds is covering the overage of next year’s budget,” Shearer said.
