City weighs 2025 budget options, including firefighter hires

A pair of options for the City of Eden Prairie’s budget and property tax levy for 2025 are being considered by the city council. One option would add firefighters to improve response times for fires and medical emergencies.

Why it matters: The amount of property taxes paid by Eden Prairie residents and businesses in 2025 directly correlates with the annual budget plans now being formulated by local governments, including the city, county, and school district.

One alternative is to approve a total city budget of slightly more than $62.3 million, which would require a 4.5 percent increase in the tax levy. That compares to a 2024 budget of $60.3 million that required a 5.6 percent tax levy increase. With this option, city services in 2025 would look a lot like they do in 2024.

The other choice, presented Tuesday, Aug. 20, during a city council workshop, is to increase the city’s 2025 property tax levy by 5.8 percent instead of 4.5 percent. The higher levy would provide an additional $450,000 to begin a multi-year plan to expand the number of firefighters as a way of reducing the Fire Department’s response times.

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“We’d like to recommend starting that next year, and not waiting till the year after,” City Manager Rick Getschow told the city council.

Without taking a vote Tuesday, council members indicated they favor establishing the higher number in September when local governments formally set their preliminary tax levies for 2025. They can reduce that preliminary number before the end of the year but cannot exceed it.

“You have all the way till the end of the year to change your mind,” Getschow told them.

Both options would result in tax increases. Getschow estimated that the 4.5 percent increase in the tax levy would raise city taxes on a $540,000 Eden Prairie home by about $116.

Here’s what else you need to know about the council’s 2025 budget deliberations:

• Most of the increased spending in the 2025 base budget is for city employee wages and benefits. Almost 70 percent of the city’s general-fund budget is personnel costs.
• In July, a consultant told city officials that the time it takes the fire department to respond to emergencies is beyond industry best practices. Significant improvement requires many more full- and part-time firefighters, the consultant said.
• The city’s current model typically has three firefighters at each of two fire stations at any one time, for a total of six ready to respond, with additional firefighters paged as needed. However, Citygate Associates recommended increasing the ready-to-respond complement from six firefighters to 13, ensuring a crew of at least three firefighters at each of the four stations around the clock.
• Getschow said city staff believes it can reach its firefighter hiring goal in roughly five years. An increased tax levy isn’t the only tool the city would use to increase firefighting personnel. Grants and funding from other sources would be pursued, said the city manager.
• Getschow said Tuesday that the 5.8 percent tax levy increase would still compare favorably to nearby suburbs, including Minnetonka, Edina, and Bloomington, which are preliminarily considering tax levy increases of between 9 and 15 percent.
• Another big endeavor on the horizon is remodeling the Eden Prairie City Center, primarily for the Police Department. The 2025 project is estimated to cost $23.642 million, but Getschow said the city doesn’t need to begin paying for it until 2026.

More detail on the firefighter recommendations is in a story reported by EPLN in July.