It’s a new budget year for Louisville Metro Government, and that means new spending priorities.
Metro Council approved the city’s 2025-2026 budget last week. Over the coming year, residents should start feeling the funding that was appropriated to park improvements and new public safety initiatives. The city also plans to pilot a handful of programs, from using artificial intelligence to streamline city services to helping first responders by using drone technology.
LPM News Assistant News Director Amina Elahi sat down with City Reporter Roberto Roldan to talk about some of these new initiatives.
Roberto, this year’s budget is about $100 million bigger than last year’s. Where is that money coming from?
The bulk of it is from a recent $50 million surplus.
You know, city budgets work differently than the budget that you or I have. Usually we can estimate how much money we’re going to earn, so we know what we can spend. With city budgets, you’re forecasting a year in advance how much revenue will come in from all these different streams: property taxes, payroll taxes, hotel taxes.
When revenues coming in exceed what the city expected, or you have a lot of open jobs or you cut spending, then you can end up with a surplus.
What did city officials decide to put that extra money into?
The department with the biggest budget increase — and the department with the biggest budget in general — is Louisville Metro Police.
Their budget is increasing by about $25 million. Part of that is going to new recruit classes, which have been increasing in size, as well as new police cars and license plate readers.
Something that’s gotten a lot of attention is this new drone pilot program. The idea seems to be that drones could respond to structure fires or hostage situations before first responders get there, so those drones can sort of preview the situation for them.
And there’s funding in the budget for some other pilot programs, too, right?
Yes, there’s about a million dollars for a manufactured homes pilot project aimed at expanding affordable housing. The city is going to work with a MMY US, which recently found itself in a bit of controversy. It faced criticism for not having built the demonstration homes it got city funding for last year, as well as the company’s close connection to a city official.
Separately, there’s a $2 million artificial intelligence pilot. It’s not really clear right now exactly what the city wants to rely on AI for, but the mayor has mentioned using it to speed up permitting and to respond to public records requests.
Both of those are in the operating budget.
Residents may not know that the city budget is actually two budgets. Can you explain the difference between the capital and operating budgets?
The big distinction is that the operating budget has to balance out, there’s revenue in and spending out. In contrast, capital projects can be funded by bonds or debt, but that eventually has to be paid back.
One thing that’s getting more money this year is the new police headquarters project downtown. The cost of the new headquarters has ballooned from an expected $20 million to more than $70 million, so this year’s budget contains about $9 million to keep moving that project forward.
The capital budget also contains $6 million for the city to acquire land in the South End for a new first responder training facility that’s supposed to be used by LMPD, Louisville Fire and EMS. Greenberg’s initial proposal from April didn’t have that funding. He said he wanted to go to the state, but Metro Council Republicans successfully negotiated that in.
Another thing of note is that the capital budget puts $12.5 million into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which is actually less than the city has contributed each of the past two years.
Louisville is known for its public parks, especially the Olmsted Park System. Are they getting any more money this year?
Yes, Metro Council added about half a million dollars for deferred park maintenance on top of what Greenberg had budgeted for.
Residents can expect to see security upgrades at Algonquin Park and some new park rangers. There should also be improvements to the restrooms at Cherokee Park, a new splash pad in Shively and work on the Bobby Nichols and Sun Valley golf courses.
Editor’s note: Louisville Public Media, which owns LPM News, received funding in this year’s city budget through an external agency grant from the Office of Arts + Creative Industries. Read our statement on editorial independence here.
