Prioritizing City Funds
The City of Rexburg wants to gather input from our citizens to help guide budget decisions during the annual Budget process. We would like to know your opinion regarding what City services should be prioritized.
In phase 1, we've opened a survey for Rexburg Residents to share their thoughts on services provided by the City. Please scroll down to find the survey below.
The City of Rexburg provides a variety of services to our citizens. Services are divided into "essential" and "non-essential".
These services include:
Essential Services
- Sewer
- Water
- Streets
- Stormwater*
- Garbage/Recycling
- City Police
- City Fire & Ambulance**
- Planning & Zoning
- Building Inspections
Non-Essential Services
- Cultural Arts
- Rexburg-Madison County Airport
- Parks/Trails
- Recreation
- Economic Development
*Pipes and drains to handle rain and snowmelt
**Ambulance services are funded through the ambulance district taxing entity.
If you need further clarification of what these services provide, you can learn more on the department's webpage at rexburg.org.
The Rexburg Budget
Each Fiscal Year (October 1st - September 30th) a new budget is approved and allocated to individual departments. Within that budget, approximately 77% is dedicated to specific funds, while the remaining 33% is divvied up into the "General Fund" budget. Here, in the General Fund budget, spending is more discretionary.
To view the current Fiscal Year's budget, follow the link below for all the nitty gritty details.
Rexburg's intention is to repeat this survey and analysis process each year to gain a better understanding of the growing needs of our community.
Phases
Analysis of the results
Thank you to everyone who participated and took our Budget Process Survey!
We've included a detailed review of the survey results compiled by our Chief Finance Officer (CFO), Matt Neilson, in the attached document below. We invite you to view those results at your leisure.
Our CFO also provides a summary of noteworthy results here:
- Water, Streets, and Police were the top 3 choices for the most important essential services as anticipated.
- Non-essential services were ranked in the following order: Economic Development, Parks/Trails, Recreation, Cultural Arts, Airport
- The satisfaction service level with streets was 2.6. All others were above a 3 out of 5.
- In Recreation, the highest priorities were youth sports programs and the Rexburg Rapids Aquatic Center
- The new programs and services desired section showed a recreation center and indoor swimming pool as the highest desired amenities.
- In Cultural Arts the most important ranked service by far was activities and programming followed by the Tabernacle, then the Romance, and then the Museum of Rexburgm, which trailed far behind the others.
- In the parks and trails section, the lowest average score was for trails and trail connectivity over parks, but both had scores of 3 or better.
- Building and Connecting Trails were something people seemed to want to invest in the most, especially along the river.
- People seemed very pleased with the services offered in the Public Safety section.
- In the public works section, it was very apparent that people are not too satisfied with street conditions, especially potholes. We should probably discuss in the budget process if there is a better approach to pothole filling in the Spring. I have wondered if we could bring on more PT staff to work alongside our full-time crew. The other issue with potholes is that Main Street and 2nd East seem to be a big issue (from feedback outside the survey). I wonder if we could not do something different there, working with the State to get those filled more timely.
- Snow removal got a marginal score of 2.9 out of 5 on satisfaction level.
- The respondents were not too supportive of a General Obligation bond to increase property taxes to replace streets more frequently.
Be sure to visit our other open and active projects across Engage Rexburg for more opportunities to share your thoughts with us.