Atlanta City Council OKs budget, calls for more oversight into spending

The general fund spending, which covers most city services and is paid with local taxes and fees, represents a 14% increase from this fiscal year’s $853 million general fund budget. Overall, the budget approved Monday by the council is more than $3 billion, which includes pass-through funds from the state and federal governments.

“This is a vote of confidence for Atlanta’s future,” Dickens said to council members on Monday.

The mayor’s remarks Monday did not address the council’s request for tighter oversight, but he had previously said he supports it during budget hearings.

“We’re continuing our commitment to public safety, continuing our commitment to affordable housing, continuing our commitment to young people,” the mayor said of the budget’s investments.

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

This year’s budget season started with council members’ frustration over the administration’s lack of transparency about how the city was addressing the looming budget deficit. That was coupled with concern about the record-setting general fund budget in contrast to a potential recession caused by Trump administration tariffs and the anticipated inflation that could result.

“The resolution that we passed contains some really important oversight steps — that we all need to commit to — that are much stronger and more stringent than what we’re used to,” said council member Howard Shook, referring to the additional budget briefings and council involvement in the next budget.

Shook, who helped lead the city’s budget process for more than two decades, said the city intends to hire an outside consulting firm to evaluate the spending mistakes made in this year’s budget. The new fiscal year starts July 1.

“An error is not a mistake until you repeat it,” he said. “As difficult as the budget was, we might have made it look too easy today.”

The council also recommended that the city continue with the Vacancy Review Board, which gives Dickens administration officials final approval on any new hires. The strict hiring process was instituted to help offset the deficit.

Atlanta’s finance gurus began raising red flags earlier this year over an anticipated $33 million budget deficit, which they attributed mainly to Atlanta Police Department overtime spending — particularly for security needs around the city’s controversial public safety training center, which is now open.

Along with fears of a national recession, council members were surprised when the mayor’s office presented its double-digit increase to the general fund budget.

“The federal landscape is scary, to be quite blunt,” the mayor said after the budget passed. “We are moving forward with a budget that is balanced, that is careful and that doesn’t anticipate certain things that the federal government has already cut out.”

For months before the start of Atlanta’s budget season, the mayor’s office worked to quietly reduce the deficit this year by cutting spending by at least 5% across departments. Those cuts included slashing about 150 full-time city jobs.

Still, the fiscal year 2026 budget proposal passed unanimously with a nearly 20% increase to the Atlanta Police Department budget and a more than 37% increase for the Department of Corrections.

City officials say the increases align with what departments actually spent last year.