The Manchester Board of Mayor and Aldermen will begin the new budget season with a special call Finance Committee meeting on April 6.

Finance Director Anthony Burrows will bring a budget proposal with “cautious optimism,” and a commitment to not increasing property tax. Additionally, the budget is planned to include additional raises for city employees.

The Finance Committee also approved budget amendments on March 17 to tidy up the 2025-26 budget. All together the city has made over $2 million worth of much-needed improvements to city infrastructure this year.

“At the end of the day when we passed the budget last year, we said we’d be (balanced),” Mayor Joey Hobbs said. “We’ve gotten trucks and had some really good opportunities.”

According to the discussion, city funds for the year are up $800,000 over spending and the city will garner small excesses from building permits and sales taxes over what was predicted in the budget.

This year the city has revamped an aging fleet of Water Department trucks, updated the fleet of patrol cars and purchased a new fire engine.

“It’s nice that we were able to spend close to $2 million on infrastructure this year, whether it be fixing facilities, buying vehicles or catching the city up on IT,” Hobbs said.

He said the city has worked to bring the city’s infrastructure for employees to a “very good level.”

“I think we’re about caught up on a lot of the vehicles,” Burrows said, echoing the mayor’s assurance of responsible spending.

Parsley added that everything that has been purchased has been things that were necessary to get the city where it needs to be.

Hobbs said revenues are moving in the right direction and said there would not be any discussions about property tax increases or rate hikes.

“We’ve been very fortunate,” he said.