MANSFIELD — Mayor Jodie Perry on Tuesday evening unveiled to City Council what she termed a “responsible” financial blueprint for 2026.
The temporary budget proposal calls for $37.7 million in general fund spending next year, about $325,000 less than was budgeted for 2025, according to the mayor and city Finance Director Kelly Converse.
The 2025 budget called for $38.1 million in general fund spending.
“I worked really hard when going through this to keep our spending flat,” the mayor told City Council on Tuesday. “We’re in an economy that is flat. It’s not going down a ton, but it’s also not skyrocketing at the moment.
“We do have some good economic development projects that I think will be coming down the pike, which give me a lot of hope for 2026 and beyond, but we really worked hard to make sure that even with the increases that we had made on personnel, we cut back on the operation spending to keep things flat,” Perry said.
Perry and Converse also met with the Richland Source in advance of the meeting to go over the plan rolled out to lawmakers on Tuesday night.
Under state law, the city must approve at least a temporary budget for 2026 by Dec. 31. It then has until the end of March to approve a final spending plan.
No member of council asked questions about the budget during the meeting and a vote may come as soon as Dec. 2.
“The priorities still remain in the same categories of growth, infrastructure and safety,” the mayor said. “I would say that what you’re going to see next year is flat spending.
“If you look at the general fund, it’s actually cut by a very small percent, but it’s smaller than last year, at this point.
“We were able to do that despite having to settle a new (AFSCME) contract that gave out decent raises … and we’re negotiating with our other unions (police and fire),” Perry said.
“We have pulled back on some of the operational spending,” the mayor said.
(Below is a PDF with the City of Mansfield 2026 temporary budget legislation introduced to City Council on Tuesday evening.)
The 2026 spending plan includes $34.9 million for the city’s safety forces — police, fire and 9-1-1 center.
That includes $19,087,04 from the general fund, as well as revenue from the voter-approved safety forces income tax, most recently re-approved in 2023 for another four years at one-half percent, and the voter-approved PRIDE tax, a quarter-percent income tax.
The mayor said 54 percent of the city’s general fund budget for 2026 is allocated to safety forces spending.
“It’s an important thing and we are still in the middle of (contract) negotiations with our (police and fire) unions there,” Perry said.
Perry said the 2026 budget includes four new police officers, aided by a $1.3 million U.S. Dept. of Justice Community Oriented Policing Services four-year grant the city learned in late October it will receive.
“We were thrilled to receive the federal grant to help us pay for the new officers,” the mayor said.
Those hires could boost the Mansfield Division of Police to 91 sworn officers. The Mansfield Fire Department has 93.
“The budget does include our police and fire departments being fully staffed, which, knock on wood, we basically are right now,” Perry said.
The plan also calls for $40.8 million in “public works” spending, largely derived from water, sewer and street resurfacing funds. Money in those funds must be spent in public works designated areas.
The mayor offered slides during her presentation to council on “fiscal strengths, quality of life highlights, public safety highlights, infrastructure highlights and economic development highlights.”
(Below are slides presented by Mansfield Mayor Jodie Perry during Tuesday night’s City Council meeting related to the 2026 temporary budget plan presented to lawmakers.)
Converse said the budget calls for increases for both police and firefighter unions with new contracts currently being negotiated.
“It would be fiscally imprudent to do otherwise,” she said. “If we didn’t budget for some sort of increase, whatever the estimate might be, then we would be caught off guard next year when everything is settled and we didn’t plan for it.
“In order to properly plan, you have to include something,” Converse said.
The mayor said there is not a great deal of funding for new infrastructure projects.
“I would say it continues the infrastructure projects that we’ve had ongoing, but there are not a lot of brand new things.
“We’ll continue (street) resurfacing. We’re going to continue water main replacements (using a quarter-percent income tax voters approved in 2024). The Main Street improvement project will finish up this coming year,” Perry said.
“We will be finishing, but we’re not kicking off a lot of new (projects). We’re doing planning for future years, but not as much construction,” the mayor said.
The budget also calls for $1.2 million for the parks and recreation department, largely based on 22 percent of the PRIDE tax approved by voters in May for another four years.
The tax is an acronym for a quarter-percent city income tax that helps pay for a combination of parks and recreation, illumination (re: streetlights), demolition and emergency services (police/fire.)
Under the tax, 50 percent must be used for safety forces with 22 percent for parks and recreation, 20 percent for demolition of vacant properties and blight and eight percent for streetlights.
Converse told City Council her job during the budget process is to estimate how much revenue the city can expect to receive.
“When it comes to budget preparation, our responsibility is estimating the revenue and then handing it off to the mayor to determine how it’s going to be spent,” she said.
“But we take a conservative viewpoint in estimating the revenue, largely through income taxes because it’s our largest source of funding,” the finance director said.
Converse said she expects 2026 city revenue, largely based on income taxes, to be flat when compared to 2025.
“Income tax revenue (this year) is flat (compared to 2024), but that’s only because of the Water Main Initiative money that’s been added. Otherwise, it’s in a period of slight decline.
“For next year, we estimated conservatively, like we always do. We used a three-year average of the last three years to determine where we think income taxes might come in next year and other taxes, as well,” the finance director said.
“We look at the historic trends, plus any new economic information that we might know, before we decide where we think we’re going to land next year.
“Then we’ll review it all again at the end of this year just to compare actuals versus our estimate and any information that becomes available between now and when we’re back in this process again next month,” Converse said.
The finance director, who came into office at the same time as Perry in January 2024, credited the mayor for her willingness to cooperate on the budget.
“Comparing my experience before to my experience with Mayor Perry, she approaches this from a very detailed perspective,” said Converse, who previously served as the city’s finance director from 2007 to 2011.
“She has a very detailed perspective and cares about what’s going on behind the numbers and what’s in the department requests, rather than just looking at the bottom line and then slashing out capital (requests) to make it work,” Converse said.
“She had taken a very thoughtful approach to it and it has a lot of integrity from the beginning. It’s not just something put together to balance … to put before a council for passage … and then see if it makes sense for the the final budget,” the finance director said.
At the end of the presentation during council’s caucus, President Phil Scott asked if any lawmakers had questions.
After a pause, he said, “Hearing none, I guess we will move on.”
(Watch the Tuesday night Mansfield City Council meeting below. The meeting begins at the 7:39 mark with a public hearing on a requested parcel rezoning issue.)
