Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert unveiled her 2018 budget to the city council on Tuesday. In the proposed budget Stothert adds 20 more police officers increasing the force to a staff of 880. Stothert plans to also add 6 more firefighters and put medic 78 back into service.
The library system budget adds about $1 million with $50,000 to add two new security guards at two branches.
The parks department also gets $250,000 to fight the Emerald Ash Borer, and funds two new tree trimmers.
However, there will be no decreases in the property tax or the restaurant tax. Stothert said the reason being there’s services like more police and fixing roads the taxpayers asked for and there’s a cost, “To take property tax rate down more or to try and eliminate the restaurant tax in 2018 it would leave an enormous hole, multimillion dollar hold in the budget and we would not be able to do these things,” she said.
According to the proposed budget, the restaurant tax will bring in an estimated $33 million, a raise from a projected $31 million in 2017.
The budget also calls for more than $1 million more to fix roads, bringing the total cost to roughly $12 million in 2018 with $600,000 to brick repair.
In total, the proposed budget is $903 million and offers no tax cuts.
