City Budgets

Some cities list their swimming pools and water parks separately from Parks & Recreation. We opted not to combine those here and omitted them because Green Valley does not have a swimming pool or water park. More than half of these cities pay a share of the operational and maintenance costs for their airports. Some cities budget city clerk functions, information technology, and other administrative costs separately, and we opted to combine them as “administration” here. Note that some cities do not have fire departments and instead rely on a rural or other consolidated fire protection agency, which is funded separately from the city. We did not include water or sewer here because those are generally user-fee-funded operations. In cities like Wamego, which operate their own electric utility, we omitted any costs associated with that operation to the extent possible. Our goal was to get as close to an apples-to-apples comparison as possible.

There are some cities with extremely different situations. For example, Fairway, Johnson County, has a mill levy of 19.929, which seemed very low. This is likely due to their exceptional valuation of more than $156 million, which allows a city of only 4,159 people to pay $1.9 million for a police department, $1.1 million for parks & rec, and a whopping $1.966 million for administrative overhead. Compare that with nearby Osawatomie, a city of almost exactly the same size, charging 76 mills against its $42 million valuation, and a remarkable $358k to operate a municipal court. You can clearly see that each city has its own opportunities, challenges, and priorities.