Frequently Asked Questions

The mill levy is the City’s property-tax rate. One mill equals $1 of tax for every $1,000 of your property’s assessed value (not its market value).

In Kansas, a home is assessed at 11.5% of its market value. So a home worth $200,000 has an assessed value of about $23,000. If the City’s mill levy is, say, 40 mills, the City portion of that home’s property tax would be about $23 × 40 = $920 per year.

Your total tax bill also includes the county, school district, and other taxing units — the City is only one part. See the glossary for more.

Not necessarily. Even if the mill levy (the rate) stays the same, your bill can go up if your property’s assessed value rises — because the same rate is applied to a larger value. This is why Kansas now requires cities to hold a “revenue-neutral rate” hearing if they plan to collect more total property tax than the year before, even when the rate is unchanged (K.S.A. 79-2988 — read it at https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch79/079_029_0088.html).

The Budget Process page explains when these hearings happen.

The clearest answer is on the Where the Money Goes page, which breaks spending down by fund and by department with charts you can read at a glance.

In short: most day-to-day services (administration, public safety, streets, parks) are paid for by the General Fund, while utilities like water and sewer are paid for separately by the fees on your utility bill — not by taxes.

By law and by good practice, cities use fund accounting: money is kept in separate pots, each dedicated to a purpose. This protects residents — for example, the money you pay on your water bill legally can only be spent on the water system, not diverted to something else.

See the Funds page for a plain-language explanation of each one.

It’s a fair question — but those balances aren’t spare cash the City is sitting on. They’re money set aside for a specific job, and in most cases state law does not allow it to be refunded or spent on anything else. We’ve cited the Kansas statutes below so you can read them yourself.

Most of it is legally restricted. Money in the Water and Sewer funds came from utility bills — not taxes — and by law utility revenue may be spent only on operating, renewing, or extending the utility it came from (K.S.A. 12-825d). The Special Highway fund is the City’s share of the state motor-fuel (gas) tax, which Kansas restricts to the “construction, reconstruction, alteration, repair and maintenance of the streets and highways” (K.S.A. 79-3425c). That money can’t be redirected into rebate checks; it has to stay with the purpose it was collected for.

It isn’t sitting idle — it’s already committed to projects. Look at the fund pages: in this budget the water, sewer, and street funds are each spending more than they take in this year, drawing their balances down on capital work — pipes, equipment, and road repairs. What looks like a pile of cash is really savings earmarked for known, expensive projects.

Every fund needs a working cushion. Revenue arrives unevenly — property taxes come in two large batches a year, and grants often reimburse the City only after it has spent the money. A fund has to keep enough on hand to pay its bills in between. Kansas’s Cash-Basis Law also makes it unlawful for the City to create debt or spend beyond the funds actually on hand (K.S.A. 10-1101 et seq., especially K.S.A. 10-1112), and the Budget Law bars spending more than the amount budgeted for a given fund (K.S.A. 79-2925 et seq.; K.S.A. 79-2934). So running a fund down to zero isn’t an option.

Reserves actually save residents money. A healthy balance lets the City handle a broken water main or a storm without an emergency tax increase or expensive borrowing. Spending the savings down to nothing would just mean borrowing later — and paying interest on top. Saving is cheaper than borrowing.

The real way the City returns money to residents is a lower tax bill. That’s the lever the City actually controls, and it used it: the mill levy is 30.41, down from 38.10 the year before, and below the revenue-neutral rate — the rate that would raise the same property-tax dollars as last year (K.S.A. 79-2988). The City is collecting less in property tax than it could. See How the budget is made for how that’s decided each year.

Bottom line: the fund balances aren’t extra money looking for a use — they’re restricted by law, already spoken for, and protecting residents from bigger costs down the road. Keeping taxes low is the honest way to give money back, and that’s where the City focuses.

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Legal authority (Kansas Statutes Annotated). We’re not asking you to take our word for it — read the law directly on the Kansas Revisor of Statutes site:

• K.S.A. 12-825d — city utility revenue may be spent only on operating, renewing, or extending that utility. https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch12/012_008_0025d.html
• K.S.A. 79-3425c — the City’s share of the state motor-fuel tax may be used only for streets and highways (the Special Highway fund). https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch79/079_034_0025c.html
• K.S.A. 10-1101 et seq. (Cash-Basis Law), esp. 10-1112 — a municipality may not create debt or spend in excess of the funds actually on hand. https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch10/010_011_0012.html
• K.S.A. 79-2925 et seq. (Budget Law) and 79-2934 — money in a fund cannot be spent beyond that fund’s adopted budget. https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch79/079_029_0034.html
• K.S.A. 79-2988 — the revenue-neutral-rate notice and public-hearing requirement before a city collects more property tax than the prior year. https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch79/079_029_0088.html

These statutes are provided as plain-language pointers to the law, not as legal advice. Where this summary and the statute differ, the statute controls.

Every year, Kansas law requires the City to hold a public budget hearing before the budget is adopted. That hearing is built specifically for resident input — you can attend, ask questions, and comment.

You don’t have to wait for it, though. You can email the City any time, and once the proposed budget is published you can read it and bring questions. See the Budget Process page for the timeline and exact dates.

The figures shown are the City’s adopted 2026 budget, transcribed from the official Kansas budget forms. They’re shown as the working baseline while the 2027 budget is being developed, and will be replaced with the adopted 2027 figures once that budget is approved.

Where any figure here differs from the official adopted budget, the official budget controls. See About this site for the source documents and the date the figures were last reviewed.

Because they’re two different documents, and both are correct:

• The adopted budget (shown on Where the Money Goes) is the City’s legal spending ceiling — set fund by fund and deliberately set high. Under Kansas cash-basis and budget law, the City cannot legally spend more than the adopted amount, so it’s budgeted with room to spare.
• The Detailed Spending page shows the working budget from the City’s QuickBooks accounting — what staff actually plan to spend, by department, in finer detail.

The working General Fund budget comes in below the adopted ceiling, which means the City plans to operate within its legal authority. The Detailed Spending page shows the full department-by-department reconciliation between the two.