MORGANTOWN – Flat or declining revenues, rising costs and increased operating pressures.
That, in short, is the fiscal reality facing the city of Morgantown as it prepares to adopt its operating budget for the upcoming 2026-27 fiscal year.
According to information presented by the city, a general fund budget of $41,829,181 is projected.
When compared to the $45,112,629 general fund adopted as part of the FY 2025 budget, and the $45,392,959 general fund budget approved for FY 2026, the discrepancies are both significant and alarming.
But those numbers were never accurate. They were artificially inflated due to an inconsistent methodology in calculating carryover amounts.
The city took an emergency step to address the issue within its current budget in July, when, among other measures, city council froze $2 million, or 59%, of its remaining financial stabilization fund as a backstop after realizing the roughly $6 million in carryover it anticipated having on-hand was actually about $2.7 million.
Mayor Danielle Trumble credits City Manager Jamie Miller, who arrived in June, for quickly recognizing the problem and moving to address it.
“It’s going to be a growth curve as we move into developing the budget with the appropriate carryover calculations,” Trumble said. “So, we’re not bringing in any less dollars than we brought in in previous years, but we’re anticipating less of a carryover … So we’re just trying to make the budget more realistic with what is actually on-hand at the end of the year.”
When those previous budgets are recalibrated with the actual carryover amounts, they fall more in line with what the city is expecting in this FY 2027 budgeting process.
And that’s the real issue facing the city – a continuing trend of flat revenues versus rising costs.
In her budget summary included as part of tonight’s Morgantown City Council agenda, Miller explains that when it comes to the city’s primary revenue streams, some are up a little, some are down a little, but overall, revenues are expected to remain flat.
Conversely, a number of expenditures are expected to rise, perhaps most notably the city is expecting to see a 17.1% increase in the employer contribution to its self-funded employee health insurance plan.
“We’re really struggling with the cost of benefits. Health insurance costs are going up for us as they are for everyone across the country, really. But we’re a self-funded plan. We’re having to take a hard look at the benefits that we’re offering and what the employer contribution is going to be to the plan, because we don’t want to get into another situation like we were in this time last year, where they had to come to us and say, ‘Hey, we don’t have enough money to cover payments this month,’” Trumble said.
The instance referenced came in January 2025, when council approved $3,315,040 out of the city’s financial stabilization fund to repay $1.45 million already borrowed from the city’s general fund. The remainder went to cover IBNR, meaning the costs had been incurred but the city was still waiting on the bill.
In the budget summary provided to council, Miller noted that the decisions reflected in the upcoming spending plan “are not temporary measures, but deliberate steps” toward an improved financial standing.
“While this was not an exercise in across-the-board cuts, nor a withdrawal from our service commitments, every department shared the responsibility of aligning spending with available resources,” Miller wrote.
She went on to say that the effort to realign revenues and expenditures may result in “some scaled back operational capacity,” but does not fully eliminate any major programs.
Some of the cost-saving measures recommended as part of the upcoming budget includes the removal of cost-of-living adjustments to employees. The city’s seniority-based STEP adjustments would remain in place.
While no positions are being eliminated as part of the proposed budget, 16 open positions would be frozen. The city’s full-time employee count will remain approximately 306.
“While the Police Department’s budget accounts for several of these frozen positions, the department’s budget is still estimated in a way that will allow them to fill several vacant roles,” Miller explained in the summary.
Trumble expanded on that point.
“I think it probably looks like the police are getting more of a cut … This budget just says, realistically, how many of those open positions are they going to be able to hire? When there are 18 open positions or something like that, [Miller] said, ‘Alright, well, right now we’re going to say we’re freezing 12 of those. So, let’s budget that money where it’s needed as opposed to where it won’t be used,” she said. “We’re not budgeting for them. That’s not to say we couldn’t come back in the future. It’s just realistically this year, we’re not going to be able to hire all of those officers … Now, if we have 18 people who just can’t wait to become police officers this year, I’ll start digging around to try to find that money.”
Ultimately, Trumble said she would rather make difficult decisions now and potentially be able to make future adjustments reintroducing COLA raises or new hires than be forced into finding areas to cut midway through the year.
Morgantown City Council is scheduled to hold its first public discussion of next year’s spending plan when it convenes for its monthly committee of the whole session this evening.
The 2026-’27 fiscal year runs from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027.
