City budget remains in limbo as officials scramble to cut expenses for Fiscal Year ’27

Recent flare-ups during the City of Gladewater’s budget season have drastically delayed the development of a final financial plan for Fiscal Year 2026-2027 – city officials will meet twice next week to meet key deadlines.
As of last week, the general consensus among city council members is to dial back the proposed 14.5 percent tax rate increase they approved Aug. 25. Likewise, they want to avoid a $20 increase to the water base rate, eyeing something around $10 instead.
To that end, FY2027 will be a “stability year,” Mayor Brandy Flanagan-Shipp told the council members and city staffers gathered at City Hall Sept. 3.
“We don’t want to go backwards,” she said, focused on avoiding any negative impact on services.
The council members spent a bit more than an hour in a budget workshop last Thursday following a tense and, once again, heated back-and-forth over expenditures the past year that utilized a portion of the city’s excess funds.
“The budget’s going to have to be really watched this year,” the mayor repeated. “The goal is to put enough in there to keep things moving at the exact quality of operations that are here.
“We just need to know that everybody is on the same page… This is going to have to be a year where we go, ‘Is it a need or is it a want?'”
Due to agenda posting requirements and personal scheduling conflicts, the council members are not gathering for a public session this week. They’re scheduled for two meetings in the coming days, however, planned for Tuesday and Thursday, Sept. 15 and Sept.17. The latter, Thursday’s regular monthly session, has not yet been posted – the agenda will likely be released Friday, Sept. 11.
It puts them outside the preferred timeline for getting the city’s numbers to Gregg County and Upshur County ahead of the end of the current fiscal year.
In the interim, department heads at City Hall are taking another stab at trimming the fat without cutting into the bone.
There are key equipment purchases necessary at the wastewater plant, for example. There are personnel considerations to keep in mind as well.
Among other discussion Thursday, Gladewater Public Works Director Brian Smith asked the council members to keep a 2.8 percent raise in mind for employees.
“If we don’t, we’re going to lose a lot of them,” he cautioned.
A portion of last week’s brainstorming session was devoted to brainstorming novel ways to account for rising costs, to cover current fines for past years’ TCEQ violations and to keep from passing on expenses to taxpayers.
By the end of the process, the mayor concluded, if tax and rate increases are necessary, everyone in the room has to be able to tell residents “I promise you we tried everything possible and there was no other way to do it.”