Millbrae passes balanced budget

For the 2025-26 fiscal year, revenue and expenditures are expected to balance at $43.2 million each, Finance Director Mike Sung said. For the 2026-27 fiscal year, revenue and expenditures are also expected to balance at $43.4 million each. 

The city’s general fund is expected to accumulate a balance of $11.6 million at the end of the fiscal year and its reserves should go up to $6.5 million by the end of the 2025-26 fiscal year. 

For both the 2025-26 and 2026-27 fiscal years, property tax and assessments, hotel taxes and sales tax make up the bulk of the city’s revenue. Hotel tax is projected at $9.6 million for the 2025-26 year, a downturn from pre-pandemic levels, but is expected to make a modest recovery in the year following, Sung said at a previous City Council meeting. 

The city will also be receiving a one-time payment of $200,000 for a use agreement of an electronic outdoor billboard. 

On the expenditures side, fire and police costs are expected to increase by $1.3 million in the 2025-26 fiscal year and $1.1 million in the 2026-27 fiscal year to keep pace with increasing contract costs, Sung said at a previous City Council meeting. 

The City Council passed its capital budgets for the next two years, funding projects including a $3.5 million, Broadway water main repair, $1 million El Camino Real landscape median improvements, and a bevy of other sewer, street and paving initiatives. For fiscal year 2025-26, capital project expenditures will total $21.1 million, per the staff report. 

The city, which is growing, is also planning for the incorporation of six new staff positions — including another code enforcement officer, a parks service attendant and an additional water maintenance worker, among others — in the next two years.