In a July 28 workshop meeting, Cambridge City’s town council reviewed its 2025 spending so far and began planning for its 2026 budget. Like many other area government bodies and school boards, they confronted the question of how to fund services in the face of declining or legislatively limited revenue.
Town attorney Bob Bever advised the group that they should initially expect $50,000 less in available income from what the town received in 2025. That’s due to changing tax policy set at the state level, though Bever said with the increase in the maximum levy that the town is allowed to impose in property taxes, the loss might be offset to some degree.
Still, the theme for the conversation was looking for belt-tightening here and cuts there. Council members Jim McLane, Mike Amick, Debbie McGinley, Gary Cole and Jim King joined town clerk-treasurer Sherry Ervin in going through the current year’s budget line by line, discussing what has been spent, what’s left, and where there might be potential savings.
Town representatives will meet with state officials in September to provide a rough draft of their proposed 2026 budget. A public hearing will take place before then for residents wishing to weigh in on how tax dollars are spent. The council will vote on the budget in October.
Personnel changes
During the same July 28 meeting, council heard from public works superintendent Joe Webb that Chris Stapleton resigned his position as water supervisor, effective July 31. Webb discussed with council the idea to move another employee into the role, hire a new position for eight months of part-time maintenance work, and then look for another hire to work on code enforcement.
Bever expressed some concern about the possibility of having code enforcement be a part-time role, given its importance to the city.
Still, the group moved forward with approving the advertisement of two part-time positions for about 10 to 20 hours each; those can be found on page 18 of the Aug. 6 Western Wayne News.
Separately, the group asked Bever to work on a salary ordinance that provides for an hourly rate increase for three current employees, in part to recognize the additional work they might be taking on.
Next meeting
Council’s next meeting is at 6 p.m. Monday, Aug. 11, in the town government building at 127 N. Foote St., Cambridge City. The public may attend.
A version of this article appeared in the August 6 2025 print edition of the Western Wayne News.