The city of Manitowoc’s 2025 budget has been approved, but not without some attempted amendments.
Aldermen Todd Reckelburg and Brett Norell tried to amend the budget, including cutting a $500,000 investment in Red Arrow Beach and moving money around to lower the city’s tax levy.
Reckelburg explained after the meeting that he wanted to look after taxpayers.
“I’m not against any one item, it just it’s like anything else, you know. You’ve got to say what can we afford, what can we push off and that’s how I was approaching it.”
One amendment included not having any funding at all go toward downtown investments after the budget called for only $250,000 compared to $500,000 the last few years.
Alderman Eric Sitkiewitz disagreed with the move.
“I can tell you that the $250,000 is going to have a much larger impact downtown then zero dollars,” he described.
“And if we want to keep the momentum of downtown, I’m not sure why we just would wash our of it and walk away and say it’s good enough.”
All the amendments failed with Mayor Justin Nickels having to break a tie on one of them.
The 2025 Manitowoc city budget passed by a 6-4 vote, with Reckelburg and Norell, along with Alderman Brett Vanderkin and William DeBates, all voting no.
Besides the attempted amendments, there weren’t any changes made to the 2025 city budget, besides having a 3% increase in city tax rate.
Council President Bill Schlei says there’s been a lot of finance meetings about the budget and the public hearing about the budget before it passed.
“But in general, it went through pretty much unscathed,” he explained.
“And that is rather unusual from my brief history here.”
This year’s budget also includes a 5-year $35 million road investment plan that includes finishing Franklin Street among others.
