Council Work Session Provides Details on General Fund Deficit, Park Closures

Grant Seeking Still Priority for City Staff.

By John R. Bruning.

Independence–August 28, 2026– Tuesday’s council work session focused on city staff providing additional information to the mayor and city councilors on active grant seeking efforts, the potential to land federal funds for infrastructure projects, a review of the Urban Renewal Agency, and the current status of the budget deficit plus how the park closures on Monday help address that.

The meeting was tense at times, especially during the discussion of the budget deficit and the city staff’s solutions for it. Yet, the majority of the session provided the council and audience with a wealth of information highlighting the efforts of the staff to find additional funding sources while detailing the current budget crisis in the city’s general fund.

Some highlights:

Assistant City Manager Shawn Irvine gave a status update on twelve active grants Independence is currently using to develop infrastructure projects and add an additional officer to the police department. The details of these grants can be found at the end of this article.

Altogether, the city has nearly $7.9 million in active grants this year, including several for the museum and the park system. The latter grant effort is on hold as a result of the closures.

Councilor Evan Sorce asked Irvine where residents of Independence can go to find the individual grant requirements, as there has been much discussion on-line about the closures potentially violating those requirements.

According to the city staff, that information is contained in the grant agreements. The requirements are generally short term in nature, and there is not a lot of follow up demands in these contracts.

Specific grant agreements can be requested by residents at city hall.

Overall, both Irvine and City Manager Kenna West underscored that federal funds and grant monies are drying up, as budgets are pinched on every level from state to the U.S. government.

Irvine and West provided some background to our Urban Renewal Agency, how it works, and how it is supposed to repay funds loaned to it. Part of the budgetary headache the city faces currently relates directly to the URA’s underperformance in recent years.

The purpose of the URA is to upgrade, enhance and improve the city’s “blighted” areas with the expectation that property taxes will increase with the addition of new businesses and renovations designed to increase real estate values.

In years past, the general fund, water and sewer funds were used to make interfund loans to the URA to complete various projects, including the Independence Civic Center. The URA was supposed to be able to pay those loans back at a specific, planned rate. However, the URA has not generated the additional property tax revenue the city had hoped for, and in some cases the repayment of the loans is taking place at half the expected rate, which has complicated the general fund’s structural deficit.

Following Irvine’s presentation and many clarifying questions from the councilors, especially Evan Sorce and Shannon Corr, Finance Director Amanda Carey provided information on the state of the budget deficit caused by Independence’s legal inability to collect the approved city services fee since the initiation of Greg Ellis’ referendum to put it on the ballot.

The signatures required to do that were certified by the county last week, which means the city of Independence has to find a way to manage an $80,000 per month deficit in the general fund until at least December. By state law, the city cannot collect the budgeted fee until the November election is certified in early December.

Essentially, this represents five months of budgeted revenue lost to this process, creating about an $80,000 per month deficit in the general fund. Since the general fund’s contingency reserves sit currently at $212,000, the city staff has told the council there simply is not enough money to keep the city services open for the rest of the year.

By state law, the city cannot immediately close the library to staunch the deficit. Abolishment of a library requires a series of steps, including public meetings, that will take most of the fall to complete and will not be done until after the election. This means the city must find the resources to sustain the library through the abolishment process.

This has led to the park closures, which began Monday morning. To run the park system on a month basis averages about $41,000. Closing the parks cuts the monthly general fund deficit in half, reducing the burden on the $212,000 contingency and will allow the city to get through the next several months without adding additional debt.

The city also began closing the museum this week, and its building is being sold. The one-time revenue gains of such property sales will be used to replenish the general fund’s contingency, which started this budget cycle at a dangerously low level in the first place.

Councilor Roden asked the city staff how much of the library, parks and museum budget was scheduled to come from the new fee passed by the council in June. With property taxes only covering $2.8 million of the general funds’ nearly ten million dollar budget, the answer from staff was that the city counted on the fee to cover most of the operating cost of those three services.

City Manager West said that the city services fee is a stop gap effort designed to get Independence through the next few years while the staff and council work on long-term funding solutions, find other revenue opportunities and reduce the debt burden on the general fund. For now, West made it clear there are only two avenues to increase revenue to keep the services open: a levy (which was resoundingly rejected by citizens in 2024), and a fee.

Councilor Roden said she had many ideas on reducing costs, among them she suggested creating a joint Independence-Monmouth police department in order to reduce general fund expenditures. She also proposed creating a county-wide library district that shifts these operating costs out of the city’s budget.

While both long-term solutions have been discussed for decades, to no resolution, West said such moves were not off the table. The challenge has always been bringing the other cities and county to that table to make it happen. In the past, that’s always been the stumbling block.

The session grew tense at this point as Councilor Roden, members of the council and the city staff discussed what options are available to the city. Roden was unconvinced that the city had explored all avenues to reduce expenses and believed the city services fee should have been put to a vote before it was adopted into the fiscal year budget.

Councilor Bill Boisvert noted that the budget had to be approved by the end of June, giving the city no opportunity to put it on the ballot before it was finalized. Thus, it was either close the city services until a citywide vote on the matter, or approve the fee increase and balance the budget in June. The council elected to do the latter.

City Manager Kenna West said that Independence’s expenditures, especially staff salaries, are in line with comparable sized cities.

Councilor Roden asked for clarification on the $41,000 a month operating cost for the park system. Finance Director Carey fielded that question and stated personnel costs compose $17,000 a month of that figure along with $9,000 in monthly repair costs.

Councilor Roden stated that she believes these expenses are too high, and that cuts could have been made before the parks had to be closed altogether. She contrasted the $9,000 month in repair costs with the significant unrepaired damage to the sports park.

Carey asserted that the city services fee included the funds necessary to repair that damage. Since the fee could not be collected, there are no funds available for those repairs.

The heated moments that colored the latter third of the meeting notwithstanding, the night presented a wealth of valuable information to the council and to citizens who attended or watched the session livestreamed on Youtube. The next council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, September 8th at 6:30 pm and will allow public comment at the start of the evening.

Grant Information Below: