By Megan Kelley
Editor
mkelley@mihomepaper.com
CLARKSTON — At its meeting on May 12, the Clarkston City Council heard a presentation from City Manager Jonathan Smith regarding five challenge areas for the 2025-26 fiscal year.
Over the last several months, the city’s Finance Committee has been meeting to discuss the 2025-26 budget, with the public hearing set to take place at the May 27 city council meeting. Council is expected to vote on the new budget at its first meeting in June.
Though there was no motion on the table with the presentation, the goal was to get a read on how council felt about the current direction the Finance Committee is headed in regard to the budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
The five challenge areas in question are: Oakland County police services, Oakland County assessing services, new city attorney, building and inspection services and administrative staff salaries.
According to information provided by Smith, the overall percentage increase anticipated between all five categories is 20.9% ($72,641) but the total breakdown is as follows:
Oakland County police services
The increase in police services provided by the county was approved by the Oakland County Board of Commissioners late last year.
In 2024-25, the city budgeted $157,550 for police services. For the 2025-26 budget, however, it is estimated that the city will have to increase that number by 13.4% for a total of $178,667
Oakland County assessing services
Recently, an increase in cost for assessing services provided by the county was approved by the Oakland County Board of Commissioners.
In 2024-25, the city budgeted $8,600 for assessing services but for 2025-26, the city is anticipating having to increase the budget by 50.1% for a total of $12,906.
New city attorney
With the city’s current attorney, Tom Ryan, retiring at the end of June, the city council did have concerns in potentially needing to increase the budget for an attorney. However, based on candidates that have been interviewed thus far, Smith believes they will be able to keep the same $30,000 budget from the 2024-25 fiscal year without any increase.
Building and inspection services
The city currently contracts with Carlisle/Wortman for building inspection services however, the company is looking to make changes that would put more of its staff on retainer and shift the fee schedule to one that is retainer based,.rather than a variable cost.
In 2024-25, the city budgeted $19,665 for these services, however it’s anticipated that the amount budgeted for the 2025-26 fiscal year would increase to $30,000, or 52.6%
Administrative staff salaries
Salaries for city staff have been a topic of discussion for several months now, with the city recognizing it must increase staff salaries in order to retain qualified, well-trained staff especially when it comes to the clerk position as they are the ones who run elections. According to Smith, the state Bureau of Elections has indicated that they will no longer help the city with election facilitation after helping the city last August.
In 2024-25, the budget for administrative staff salaries was $131,793, but it is anticipated that there will be a 28% increase for 2025-26 for a budget total of $168,676.
In areas such as assessing services and building inspection services, Smith indicated that there is potential to work with Independence Township, which has its own assessing department and also can perform building inspections.
“We are in close conversation with Independence Township, looking for a way to partner with the township, which has better economies of scale, as you can imagine, than we do here in the city. They have options that we don’t,” Smith said.
Another proposal to fund the anticipated $72,641 increase is to remove the current library millage reduction.
In 2014, a 1.25 millage was approved by voters to support the Clarkston Independence District Library. The city council, at the time, approved a reduction in that millage to offset the cost to residents by .691 mills. The city would then pick up the leftover cost.
“That was in 2014, that’s been in place for over 10 years now. In that 10 years, we have given back $339,000 out of the city fund to the residents. It’s a great thing. Residents very much appreciate it. I understand, but over time, as our assessed values go up, right now, in 2025 if we were to do that again, that would be almost $44,000,” Smith said.
Should the city choose to eliminate this reduction, residents would see an average annual increase on their tax bill of roughly $99.59, according to city documents.
“You just can’t cost cut your way to prosperity. We have to find ways to get these things done. We have to have qualified people here to make it happen. So I think we have to seriously consider removing this millage reduction,” Smith said.
Smith empathized the importance of making connections with other municipalities like Independence Township and other cities in the area who have been through similar situations. He also noted that the city needs to be going after more grants going forward.
Smith added that he sees a light at the end of the tunnel but warned council that if action is not taken, there could be massive repercussions that could result in the city being unable to maintain its cityhood.
“I’m sorry to say, I see the day that we cannot afford to be a city anymore,” Smith said. “We have to start thinking with more creativeness. We have to start looking at ways that we can increase the revenue side of our balance sheet.”
While eliminating the library millage reduction was not ideal to the council members, it was something they understood as likely a necessary change.
“I see into the future and our costs keep going up. The Oakland County police services, the assessing services, the attorney, all that stuff continues to grow. So I feel like there’s just more and more pressure on our budget every year,” said Councilmember Gary Casey who sits on the finance committee. “I don’t like to pay any more taxes than we have to either because it’s out of my pocket, but I also want a functional city that we can be proud of and know that things are being taken care of. “
The council is set to hold the public hearing on the 2025-24 fiscal year budget on May 27 and will vote on the budget on June 9. Both meetings will begin at 7 p.m. at Artemus M. Pappas Village Hall, located 375 Depot Road.