MANSFIELD — Mansfield City Council is expected to vote Tuesday night on a final 2025 budget that includes a 5.2 percent increase in general fund spending over 2024.
Mayor Jodie Perry’s spending plan has a general fund budget of $38.1 million, up from $36.2 million a year ago.
Under state law, the city’s finalized budget must be approved by the end of March.
Perry, who took office in January 2024, largely stayed with the financial spending plan of her predecessor, Tim Theaker, whose budget local lawmakers approved on a temporary basis in December 2023.
The 2025 budget is the first fully developed by Perry and Finance Director Kelly Blankenship, who took office at the same time as the mayor.
Perry said the budget continues to reflect her priorities of growth, infrastructure and safety, including a runway resurfacing project at Mansfield Lahm Regional Airport; improvement projects at Middle Park and other parks; and equipment purchases for the police and fire departments.
The mayor said the budget allocates $100,000 for an outside consultant to work on a comprehensive, long-term land use plan for the city that looks two or three decades into the future.
“These are things developers ask us for when they are considering coming to town. It’s an important tool for us to have,” said Perry, who led the Richland Area Chamber & Economic Development for a decade before running for the mayor’s office.
“We cannot find anything recently where the city has done this, so anything we have is outdated,” the mayor said.
Perry, who said the $100,000 amount was her “best guess,” said there had been discussions on working with other local communities on the land usage planning process.
In recent years, lawmakers had asked the previous administration about bulking up the city’s codes and permits department.
Perry said Adrian Ackerman, the city’s community development and housing director, has done well managing a department that now includes codes and permits.
“You’re going to see some legislation coming through in the next couple of months that will allow us to beef up what we are going to be able to enforce,” the mayor said.
“In some cases, our codes really weren’t that strong. We walk a fine line. We don’t want sky-high expectations that we can’t meet, but we want (tools) to really go after nuisance properties,” Perry said.
Council begins its evening at 6:45 p.m. with a public affairs committee meeting on Community Development Block Grant/HOME funding requests.
Caucus is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. with the legislative session following immediately thereafter.
Local lawmakers continue to meet in Mansfield Municipal Courtroom 1 while council chambers is being renovated. Residents planning to attend should park in the upper lot off Park Avenue and enter through the Park Avenue entrance.
(Below is a PDF with legislation scheduled for consideration and/or vote Tuesday evening by Mansfield City Council.)
