City of Colby sets tax levies, final budget for 2025

By Nathaniel Underwood

The Colby city council approved their final budget for 2025 and their local tax levy at their most recent monthly meeting last Monday.

The total expenditures for the final general fund budget came out to just below $1.9 million, of which approximately $450,000 is payments for debt accrued by the city. This is up from the $1.69 million for the 2024 budget, about a 13 percent increase.

While the increase in the general fund budget would initially appear to exceed the amount needed for expenditure restraint funding, debt is not included in such calculations, allowing the city to still qualify. With recent road projects, payments for debts jumped up 58 percent from $284,000 in 2024.

The local levy for general property taxes is an even $800,000, a 4.25 percent increase from the 2024 budgeted levy of $767,398. This number was under what the city was allowed to levy, a move that was made due to some debt coming off the books in 2025 and the city not wanting to raise the levy significantly only to drop it again next year.

The city was still uncertain on how the recent reassessment of property values in the city would affect the tax situation in the future. Once levies come in from other districts near the end of the November, the full property tax picture can start to take form.

It was also noted by Mayor Jim Schmidt that, without construction being done on recent TIF district developments, the budgets would be tighter than usual.

“I know for this budget, some of the funds we had set aside for different projects in the past, we had to add to this budget to help balance it,” Schmidt said. “But the committees have been doing a good job as far as [having] a five-year plan for projects and everything and that’s really helped a lot.”