Newport Beach adopts $494.8-million budget for 2024-25

The Newport Beach City Council unanimously approved earlier this month the city’s $494.8-million budget for fiscal year 2024-25, its total 12.4% higher than last year’s budget of $440.1 million.

In his final year as a member of the Newport Beach City Council as well as the city’s finance committee, Mayor Will O’Neill said the primary reason he first ran for office was because he wanted to improve the city’s budget.

“It’s nice when we have an uncontroversial budget like we have now. But that was another thing that when I first came on, we had actually just come off the first time we’d seen a series of dissenting votes that resulted in a 4-3 budget vote, which we hadn’t seen in a while,” O’Neill said during last week’s City Council meeting when the budget was considered.

The finance committee noted a $5.3-million surplus in the budget and recommended it be put toward the end-of-the-year CalPERS contribution to pay down unfunded pension liabilities.

“Coming in and making sure that we’re taking care of our long-term debt, taking care of the unfunded pension liability so that future councils aren’t being forced into making bad decisions because [of it] ... the decisions that we are making today matter,” O’Neill said.

According to a staff report prepared for the June 11 meeting, the total budget is broken into the operating and capital improvement costs. About $440.5 million has been earmarked for operations, which includes $72.3 million in transfers between funds, while $54.3 million is expected to be used for capital improvements.

Projects in the upcoming fiscal year include work on the 15th Street restrooms, city yard fueling facilities and transfer station rehab, the Balboa Library, the facilities maintenance plan, the replacement of Fire Station No. 1 and utilities yard facilities improvements.

The budget places emphasis on maintaining the city’s financial health, high-quality municipal services, cleanliness and maintenance of public utilities and public safety, according to the report.

General fund revenues are expected to be at around $315.3 million, higher by about $7.6 million than revenues projected for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. City staff said this is supported by the local economy and that property tax remains the largest source of income for the general fund, though sales tax and transient occupancy taxes — hotel taxes — follow closely behind.

Property taxes were projected to be around $141.3 million at the time that the 2023-24 budget was adopted, but current projections place that at around $143.6 million for this calendar year and $149.3 million in 2025 — an overall growth of 4%. Sales tax is also expected to see a 5.3% growth along with the hotel tax by 4.2%.