Budget Season—Baker City officials highlight their process
By Logan Bagett on Tuesday, May 5th, 2026 in More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News
BAKER CITY — Officials with the City of Baker City are taking efforts to detail the city’s budget process to the public. On Thursday, April 30th, city staff took to social media with a post explaining how the budget works. On Monday, May 4th, a post was released that highlights different city funds and their functions.
(From the City of Baker City, 4/30/26)
Hello Baker City,
Now that the 2026-27 budget process is underway, we wanted to discuss how the City budget works. Today, we’ll discuss the process of building and approving the City budget. In future posts, we’ll look at how the different funds operate and where the money comes from to pay for different services. The final posts will describe some of the main funds in more detail.
Municipal budgets are complicated and subject to many state and federal statutes. However, the process of building and approving the budget is relatively straightforward. In Oregon, the budget year starts on July 1st and ends on June 30th. So our current budget year is about to end on June 30, 2026, and the next one will start on July 1st, 2026.
During the months of March and April, City employees work together to build a “Proposed Budget.” This Proposed Budget goes to the Budget Committee for discussion, and after analysis or required changes, the Budget Committee approves the budget. The Approved Budget then goes to the City Council for adoption. The City Council votes on the Adopted Budget, and that budget is what City staff uses during the next budget year.
Building the Proposed Budget requires an in-depth analysis of expected revenue for the next budget year and a determination of the estimated expenses and capital projects necessary for each department. City Department Directors submit their respective budgets to the City Manager, and there is quite a lot of communication among the various departments to ensure that the City is offering a reasonable, executable budget. In Oregon, the City budget must be balanced. All expenditures must be paid for by incoming revenue or savings in the balances of each respective fund.
In Baker City, our goal is to ensure that all yearly expenditures (minus some capital expenditures) are paid for by the yearly revenue that comes in. This keeps us from spending down fund balances (basically the City’s savings), so we can direct those fund balances towards critical capital projects to keep our City’s assets updated and repaired.
The City has been able to operate entirely within the revenue it receives every year without relying on spending savings from the fund balance. In addition, the City does not rely on grant funding for any operational expenses. We only use grants to pay for capital projects or other projects that we likely would not be able to do without a grant. This model has kept us from experiencing significant budget pressure when revenue is lower or expenditure is higher than expected.
So that is the process of building and adopting a budget. The Budget Board will occur May 18-21, starting at 6 pm in the City Council Chambers every evening. Typically the budget is completed by the second evening, so the final two days are backups in case more discussion or analysis is required.
Please come join us this year if you’re interested in seeing this process play out in person.
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(From the City of Baker City, 5/04/26)
Our last post covered the process of building and approving the City budget. Today, we’re discussing the various funds and their functions.
Baker City has multiple funds from the General Fund to Enterprise Funds, Special Revenue Funds, Capital Project Funds, and Trust Funds. We’ll give a quick overview below of all the major funds, and then later posts will break out those funds in more detail.
The General Fund (Fund 101 in Baker City) is intended to cover all the necessary expenditures to pay for the daily operations of the City. There are some City functions like water, wastewater, and streets that are not included in the General Fund and are described later in this post.
Baker City’s General Fund pays for several departments, most importantly the Police and Fire Departments. Those two departments account for 67% of the expenditures in the General Fund, not including major capital expenditures. Since public safety is the most central responsibility of local government, the primary focus of the General Fund is ensuring that we have trained and equipped police officers and firefighters. When we discuss the General Fund in more depth, we’ll describe how just funding police and fire is a challenge when it comes to how much revenue the City generates.
Beyond police and fire, the General Fund also covers all expenses for the cemetery, all City parks, the airport, and other key aspects including administration of the City, planning services, and community/economic development. Covering all of these expenses in one fund can be difficult, but the City Council and City staff have successfully managed these fiscal challenges in the last few years.
Enterprise Funds are the other major funds in the City. These funds are intended to be self-supporting where fees or rates account for all expenses, including capital expenses. Baker City has several Enterprise Funds, but the most significant ones are the Water Fund (Fund 104), the Wastewater Fund (Fund 105), and the Building Fund (Fund 127). We’ll cover these funds in a future post as well.
The Street Fund (Fund 102) is the main Special Revenue Fund in Baker City. Special Revenue Funds in Oregon are funds that must be used for a specific purpose. The Street Fund receives tax revenue from the state that must only be used for costs associated with street construction and maintenance. There are other Special Revenue Funds, but we’ll cover these in a future post.
The remainder of City funds are Capital Project Funds, Trust Funds, or Reserve Funds. We’ll discuss these in the future as well.
If you want to know more about how municipal budgeting works in Oregon, we highly recommend the “Budgeting Basics” document produced by the League of Oregon Cities. It is available here: https://www.orcities.org/…/3045/BudgetingBasics2-10-22.pdf
