The Des Moines City Council plans to reduce staff and services across departments in order to save $11.5 million in the city budget.
City Manager Scott Sanders presented the recommendations at the council’s meeting Monday. The plan includes cuts in departments like public safety, libraries and parks and recreation.
Iowa’s new property tax law capped the city’s general fund revenue growth at 2%, which created a $12 million gap in the city’s upcoming budget, and a $5 million gap in the fiscal year 2029 budget. City officials expect to continue to see smaller deficits each following year due to the property tax law changes.
The city council voted 6-1 to approve the recommendations but expressed concern over the circumstances.
“It’s just very difficult to be here doing this tonight,” said Mayor Connie Boesen. “No one wants to be here, and unfortunately this is ongoing. This does not end tonight, so we are all going to be working hard to figure out ways to mitigate what has happened to us.”
To balance this year’s gap, city officials started planning the budget six months early. The approved plan recommends reductions in staff, services and programs, and suggests new ways of generating revenue for many city departments.
Council member Linda Westergaard was the only member to vote against the budget, largely because of the nearly $1 million cut to the city's police and fire departments.
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to support this recommendation,” Westergaard said. “It bothers me when we have reports from both our public safety, our police and our fire. We know that we’ve not increased strength, we don’t have enough officers, we don’t have enough firefighters.”
The cuts would reduce community policing, problem solving and crime prevention outreach in the police department, while also reassigning three officers and cutting three positions. The fire department would have less capacity for fire investigations, fire prevention outreach and educational programming, and would eliminate two full-time positions and two vacant ones.
Council member Joe Gatto said department reports show that the city is already one fire station and 80 police officers short.
“I don’t think any resident paying the taxes that all of us do are going to feel safe with the response times if we keep cutting this,” he said. “I know that we didn’t do this by our choice, but I will need to see in January how we are going to move forward with the needs.”
Gatto said the council needs to find solutions to the problems the gap has created. He mentioned exploring federal support, such as the Staffing For Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grants, while council member Josh Mandelbaum hopes they can explore ways to invest some of the savings back into impacted departments.
Other cuts include $750,000 from libraries, nearly $900,000 from parks and recreation and almost $800,000 from neighborhood services.
Overall, 43 full-time positions will be eliminated: 28 vacant positions and 15 layoffs. This includes shutting down the entire Civil and Human Rights Commission, which council member Rob Barron said he never imagined he’d be voting on.
“Nothing we’re doing here is going to make government more accessible," Barron said. "Nothing here is going to make government work better for any of our people, and we know that and we don’t want to do this. But we have to make the numbers work at some point in time."
During the meeting, City Manager Sanders said the recommendations were based on the budget exercise the city released this summer, which allowed residents to identify ways to save money or generate more revenue within departments.
A final recommendation of the 2028 budget will go through a public feedback process at the end of the year. Mayor Boesen told meeting attendees they should continue suggesting ways to cut costs or preserve services.
The city council has until April 30, 2027, to submit the budget to the state.
