On June 15 the Ludington City Council did a first reading of six ordinances establishing and levying the city police pension and DDA millages<\/p>\n
Councilor Jack Bulger introduced six ordinances for their first reading, dividing them into two groups. The first three ordinances would establish the city\u2019s millage rates for the next fiscal year, including 10.9231 mills for operating expenses, 2.6213 mills for refuse services, 1.75 mills for the police pension fund, and 1.5324 mills for the Downtown Development Authority (DDA).<\/p>\n
The remaining three ordinances would authorize the tax levies based on those millage rates. Bulger said the operating and refuse millages together are projected to generate about $5.15 million, while the police pension millage would raise about $665,300. The DDA millage is expected to generate approximately $53,804.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo this is a first reading for both of these ordinances because of the timing and needing to get things in place in time for the county to actually do its thing to get the millages in place. We need to do the first reading tonight and at the next meeting we\u2019ll take a look at these further.\u201d said Bulger<\/p>\n
Counselor Mike Shaw during the meeting, encourages people to attend the upcoming meeting for input into the millages.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would just like to encourage the public to show up for this meeting and to express your concerns, whether one way or another, I would like to hear everybody\u2019s viewpoint on this. So, it\u2019d be nice if we\u2019d actually get some support. I\u2019d like to see a large group of people that were engaged to have some input on this. So, I\u2019ll speak to the camera, to the citizens of Ludington. please come to the next city council meeting so that you can weigh in on these millages there.\u201d said Shaw.<\/p>\n
City Manager Kaitlynn Aldrich urged council members to consider the city\u2019s long-term financial outlook before making decisions about property tax revenue. She reminded the council that a more detailed discussion of the city\u2019s general fund deficit is scheduled for the July 13 meeting and encouraged members to review the 2026 budget, particularly the projected deficits for 2027 and 2028.<\/p>\n
Aldrich said the city has already reduced future spending as much as possible by postponing nearly all capital projects, budgeting only for engineering work on planned construction, and eliminating funding for new positions, including a part-time code enforcement employee. She noted that even modest requests, such as a $15,000 position to address code enforcement concerns, could not be accommodated. Aldrich added that the city is also working to reduce costs through union contract negotiations and asked council members to consider the city\u2019s overall financial picture as they weigh public feedback and future budget decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just ask that you go back to that 2026 budget that we adopted, look at the deficit we already have… and try to look at this picture as holistically as you can.\u201d said Aldrich.<\/p>\n
The city council will hold a public hearing to discuss the budget deficit and ordinances is scheduled for July 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On June 15 the Ludington City Council did a first reading of six ordinances establishing and levying the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[222,17260,61,24300,7855,17268,18524,17259,1129,128,130,129,2261],"class_list":["post-233832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-budget","tag-deficit-spending","tag-economy","tag-government-budget-balance","tag-government-finances","tag-payments","tag-property-tax","tag-public-finance","tag-public-policy","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-tax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233832","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=233832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}