Mt. Pleasant budget is $12.3M, down slightly from last year

A pie chart labelled "Mount Pleasant City General-Fund Budget 2026." The text on the individual parts reads "Miscellaneous: $8,000. Transfers to business operations: $419,957 (from General Fund to Water, Sewer, Power funds, etc.). General and Administration: $945,287 (Administration, Planning and Zoning, Justice Court, Buildings and Grounds, etc.). Public Safety: $989,349 (Police, Fire). Highways/Roads: $486,687. Parks, Recreation, Public Property: $1,281,405 (Parks and Recreation, Pool, Equestrian Center, Celebrations, Cemetary)." — Chart shows allocation of Mt. Pleasant City’s general fund for 2025-26. The biggest slice of the pie is for “parks, recreation and public property.” That item includes adding a full-time recreation director and putting a new roof on the recreation center. The city is looking toward at $5 million to $15 million streets-and-roads project later in the year.

MT. PLEASANT—Barring any last-minute changes, the Mt. Pleasant City Council Tuesday passed a city budget for the next year totaling $12.3 million, down slightly from $12.5 million last year.

That number, though, includes the city’s business operations, like water, sewer and power funds.

When it comes to general operations, the budget projects a general fund total of $4.1 million. That, too, is down from last year’s $4.8 million.

Mt. Pleasant City Finance Director Dave Oxman said the budget continues a fiscally responsible trend the city has set the last few years. The city, he said, was “just kind of carrying forward the conservative approach for the last decade … of good fiscal management.”

But by end of the coming fiscal year, the general fund number could go up significantly due to a “massive” road project the city is hoping to start in 2026.

Oxman said the city has contracted for a transportation master plan that he expects to see in its final form “any day.” City officials will determine the scope of the road project from that plan. Oxman said the city is expected to go to the Community Impact Board next autumn for funding that could range from $5 million to $15 million.

But the only reflection of that in the budget is a line-item for $400,000 the city expects to as cash on hand to pay contractors. The cash reserve, Oxman says, will hopefully cause the CIB to look favorably on funding the project.

“We haven’t done the dance yet with the CIB,” Oxman said. “The council and engineers felt that we wanted to have a decent amount of cash on hand…Sometimes that looks more appealing to the CIB.”

The city in 2026 will make its final payment on a bond through Zions Bank that helped fund a previous streets project, Oxman said, adding that the payoff will make room for any loan or bond repayments the city may have to make for the upcoming project.

He made a similar statement regarding the city’s water rates. One water-treatment plant has been paid off, he said, which should allow the city to avoid any water-rate increases in the near future.

There is a fairly drastic decrease in the city’s fire department budget. That is largely due to the cost of a fire engine the city purchased this year, which, therefore, is not reflected in the 2026 budget.

There is an almost $100,000 increase in the Parks, Recreation and Public Property fund, but that is due in part to personnel costs from adding an events and celebrations coordinator position to the Recreation Department.

The bulk of the increase, though, is $75,000 that Oxman said would be used to repair the roof of the city’s rec center.

One big change that actually did not affect the budget too much is the migration of the city’s police department to a combined department with Fairview. The total expenditure for police didn’t change much—in 2026 it is projected to be $910,000, as opposed to $923,063 in 2025.

What is different is that the city will pay the amount in one lump sum, rather than apportioning it into the individual line-items that formerly made up the police budget. The money, combined with the amount that Fairview will contribute, will be apportioned by the new department’s governing board, once established.