The Manhattan City Commission on Tuesday heard budget requests from outside agencies after changing their work session into a special meeting.
RCPD Director Brian Peete updated the commission on the City’s financial burden for 2025. The police board oversees the Riley County Police Department, which is jointly run by the city and county governments.
The budget was set on June 17th by the board, the city and county governments are required to fund it. The city pays 80% of the budget and the county pays 20%.
Director Peete spoke about the budget increase, saying ” the approval of the budget was roughly I believe, 1.8 million to the Riley County Police Department, all of that money is going towards the salary.”
He added that everything else went towards health insurance costs, fuel and operational costs.
Commissioner Karen McCulloh said the increase is worth the community’s safety…
“I think it’s important that the public understand that the fiscal impact to the city of Manhattan is about 1.4 million, which is a lot of money, but we do value our police department and generally I think the police are doing a great job.”
The city also heard from various local entities regarding the 2025 budget including the Manhattan Public Library, who saw a modest 4.87% increase from last year.
Commissioner John Matta applauded their efforts to be cost-effective and come under the projected 5% budget increase.
Commissioner Peter Oppelt detailed the importance of the library to the community…
“I’m probably in the library at least once a week, I have a eight year old who can’t read enough. So I definitely understand the value. Personally and just to the community, a lot of times a library is the only place that people can go to escape the heat or the cold, if they if they don’t have other shelter. That is something I know you all at the at the library do a really good job with that and care for those community members, which is above and beyond your job description.”
Library officials said users have saved over $5,285,000 by using the Library so far in 2024.
Manhattan provides annual financial assistance to Flint Hills Area Transportation on Agency Inc. and will match their $293,000 figure from last year.
ATA bus uses city dollars to leverage federal and state transit funding – for every dollar that ATA bus spends, 70 cents is federal and state funds. So with that $293K, ATA bus was able to leverage almost $700,000 in state and federal funds.
No action was taken at Tuesday’s meeting and final budgets will be adopted at the end of August.
