The Hopkinsville City Council approved the 2026-27 fiscal year budget in its first reading and received a financial report with some positive highlights at Tuesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
To start the meeting, Steve and Diane Thomas were recognized for their $10,000 donation to the Thin Blue Run, which raised funds to support Sanctuary, Inc. and the Pennyrile Children\u2019s Advocacy Center. City Public Information Officer Amanda Brunt presented the Champion for Children Award to Diane Thomas.<\/p>\n
Turning to the city\u2019s finances, Chief Financial Officer Melissa Clayton presented April\u2019s financial statement and spotlighted some revenue increases. Last month, she says the city collected around $2.1 million in payroll taxes, which is the highest amount collected in the last two years, and hopes it\u2019s the beginning of a trend.<\/p>\n
Along with the payroll tax numbers, Clayton says the city\u2019s property tax collections are up nearly $100,000, and business license tax collections are also up in comparison to April 2025.<\/p>\n
Council members approved increasing the rates at Riverside Cemetery and Cave Springs Cemetery in the ordinance\u2019s second reading. Hopkinsville Public Works Director Mike Perry says the rates are going up as a result of increasing maintenance costs.<\/p>\n
Council members approved the city\u2019s 2026-27 budget in its first reading. The proposed $53.3 million budget includes a 3% cost-of-living-adjustment raise for city employees and no new taxes or tax increases. Ward Four Council member Chuck Crabtree shared that he would like to see dispatcher salaries increased after he was told the dispatchers in neighboring cities have higher wages.<\/p>\n
Clayton says dispatcher wages will be discussed at an upcoming Committee of the Whole Meeting ahead of the budget\u2019s second reading. At the meeting, council members also amended the 2025-26 budget to increase the city\u2019s legislative office budget by over $100,000 for legal fees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hopkinsville City Council approved the 2026-27 fiscal year budget in its first reading and received a financial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-196228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}