The Fairbanks City Council adopted its 2026 budget on Monday. The city’s fiscal year aligns with the calendar year, so the spending plan kicks in Jan. 1.
The adopted operating budget includes about $49.7 million in expenditures and wound up with an estimated surplus of roughly $840,000. That’s about half as much as the estimated surplus heading into the current fiscal year back when the council adopted the 2025 budget last December.
Going into 2026, with this year’s $840,000 surplus included, the city’s overall unassigned general fund balance is projected to be about $2 million above the codified minimum of $10 million.
The budget passed 5-1, with Councilmember Jerry Cleworth the lone no vote. He was also the only no vote on the 2025 budget.
The adoption of the 2026 spending plan followed a couple hours of council members offering final amendments at Monday’s meeting, which itself came after a series of budget meetings in November. Mayor Mindy O’Neall released her proposed budget in late October.
And on Monday, the council approved of shifting around funding and adding new positions in some of the ways O’Neall had proposed. That included reducing a section of the public works department’s budget for temporary wages by $200,000 to add two new laborers at a similar cost. The council also backed creating a community response coordinator role in place of three existing grant-funded positions and voted in favor of bringing on a second community paramedic. That position came at a cost of about $145,000.
The city created the community paramedic program last year to respond to non-emergency situations and connect patients to appropriate social and medical services. The program started out with one position, and Fire Chief Andrew Coccaro told the council it’s delivered exactly what the council had asked for.
Coccaro said the community paramedic serves a different function than other fire department personnel and that bringing in a second is the natural progression if the program is meant to be sustainable.
“I think this is a turning point for our city to decide if this community benefit is worth the investment, or if it’s not,” he said.
Cleworth didn’t support the new position. He said the size of the fire department has been increasing faster than other city departments and that, if the community paramedic program has been working, then the department should restructure internally to give it more support.
“I don’t think we have the luxury of adding another one, and then next year, they say, ‘This has been even a greater success, let’s do a third.’ I mean, where do you draw the line on it?” he said.
Others saw it differently, and Councilmember Crystal Tidwell said, out of all the budget requests, the community paramedic was the most important to her.
“I think we’ve heard from just about everyone, the success of this program, which I didn’t realize it was going to grow so fast so quickly and be as successful, but I think that’s great,” she said.
The amendment to add a second community paramedic passed 4-2. Councilmember John Ringstad joined Cleworth as a no vote on the new position.
A few other, proposed positions in the mayor’s budget failed to get enough support from the council. Those included a public information officer, an IT director and a temporary administrative assistant.
The council also passed its capital budget on Monday. It funds a variety of road improvements, equipment replacements and other upgrades. Cleworth also successfully moved to decommit $1.5 million from a project to rehab streets in Island Homes subdivision to instead use that money to add to dollars set aside for $4.7 million-worth of work on city hall’s steam heating system.