South St. Paul City Council
sets 2025 preliminary budget
Jake Spitzack
Staff Writer
The South St. Paul City Council recently certified its preliminary 2025 budget, including its property tax levy. Overall, the budget is slated to increase 7.3%, from $25.9 million to $27.8 million. The city will hold its public truth in taxation meeting on December 2 and afterward formally adopt the budget and levy.
The general fund is expected to increase 3.26% to $13.75 million. The biggest jump is the infrastructure fund which is increasing 138% ($1 million) to $1.72 million. This is primarily to support road and utility projects in 2025, ultimately allowing the city to incur little or no debt on those projects and therefore invest more in public facilities such as the central maintenance (public works) facility, aquatics facilities and recreational facilities.
The property tax levy, which affects the amount of property taxes homeowners in the city will pay, calls for a $1.43 million increase (9.06%), from $15.84 million to $17.27 million. Dakota County prepares property tax impact notices and will mail them to all homeowners in South St. Paul between November 10 and 25.
Projects in South St. Paul’s 2025 Capital Improvement Plan include:
- $1 million to replace four park play structures, resurface tennis courts at Summit Park, and for the Kaposia Park building restoration and parking lot mill and overlay projects.
- $3.27 million for work on city buildings. This includes the feasibility and design phases for the estimated $30 million replacement of the central maintenance facility and the first of three HVAC unit replacements at City Hall.
- $738,000 to replace three police cars, one large plow truck and three other vehicles for various departments.
- $830,000 for work at Doug Woog Arena. This includes replacement of the cooling tower, adding dehumidification for Rink 1, and replacement of one Zamboni and refurbishing of the other. Four HVAC units were originally slated to be replaced but the cooling tower replacement was recently found to be urgent, so HVAC replacements have been pushed to the 2026 capital improvement plan.
- $15 million for engineering projects including lead water line replacement, phase 1 of the Marie Avenue reconstruction project, the Verderosa Avenue extension project, and the 4th Street South pavement rehabilitation project.
