{"id":210107,"date":"2026-06-04T02:18:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T02:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/210107\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T02:18:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T02:18:24","slug":"wilmington-city-council-approves-first-reading-of-349-8-million-budget-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/210107\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilmington City Council approves first reading of $349.8 million budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) &#8211; Wilmington City Council approved the first reading of a $349.8 million budget for fiscal year 2027 in a 4-3 vote Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The budget will go before council for a second reading and final vote on Tuesday, June 16.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">City Manager Becky Hawke first presented the budget on May 4 with a proposed property tax increase of 5.75 cents per $100 of assessed value, according to city officials. Councilmember David Joyner moved to reduce the increase to 4.9 cents per $100, which the council approved.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The revised increase amounts to about $18.17 per month for a home with the median assessed value of $445,000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">More than 70% of the increased costs in the budget support police and fire services, the city said. The budget also includes funding for the city\u2019s living wage strategy, operational costs and infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Council approved using $2,504,978 from the city\u2019s fund balance to pay for one-time public safety purchases, including police vehicles and equipment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The budget will take effect July 1, 2026, if adopted on second reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) &#8211; Wilmington City Council approved the first reading of a $349.8 million budget for fiscal&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[91811,91809,222,91810,5360,83,139,128,130,129,5358,5359],"class_list":["post-210107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-26-27","tag-350-million","tag-budget","tag-city-of-wilmington","tag-fiscal-year","tag-money","tag-news","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-wect","tag-wilmington-city-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210107","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=210107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}