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MURFREESBORO – Following a quick and quiet public hearing, the Murfreesboro Town Council approved their budget for the upcoming Fiscal Year 2024-2025 (FY25) at their meeting on June 18.

The council previously held several work sessions over the past few months to iron out the details of the proposed FY25 budget. A public hearing was held at Tuesday’s meeting for citizen input on the proposal, but no one in attendance chose to speak.

Council member Jay Revelle motioned to adopt the new budget, and Mike Bunch seconded. The vote was unanimously in favor.

“We have a balanced budget,” announced Mayor Hal Thomas, who also thanked Town Administrator Carolyn Brown for her hard work on the budget this year.

According to the FY25 budget ordinance, the town’s ad valorem tax rate will remain at 66 cents per $100 of valuation. That rate has remained unchanged for more than a decade.

The town will operate on a total budget of $4,020,676 for the new fiscal year, an increase of about $149,000 from FY24. That total will be split between the General Fund and the Water and Sewer (Enterprise) Fund.

For the General Fund, the town is projecting a total of $2,322,476 in revenues, an increase of $128,000 over the previous year.

The largest sources of those revenues are expected to come from ad valorem taxes ($774,000), local sales tax ($515,000), and refuse fees ($370,000).

For the General Fund expenditures, the departments which will receive the largest appropriations in FY25 include Police ($927,850), Sanitation ($395,710), Administration ($290,335), Fire ($206,080), and Governing Body ($151,571).

These same five departments received the highest allocations in the FY24 budget as well. With the exception of Governing Body, the allocations for those departments have all increased for FY25 with Sanitation and Fire receiving the largest increases.

Murfreesboro’s operating budget for the Water and Sewer (Enterprise) Fund will total $1,698,200, which is an increase of $20,500 from FY24.

A majority of Enterprise revenues is expected to come from charges for Water ($815,000) and Sewer ($800,000). Those were the same projections from FY24.

Expenditures for the Enterprise Fund are expected to be $902,597 for Water, $343,367 for Sewer, and $452,236 for Wastewater Treatment. That reflects a $47,000 increase in Water for FY25, while Wastewater Treatment has decreased by almost $25,000 and Sewer remained almost the same as the previous year.

The new budget will take effect on July 1 and end on June 30, 2025.