STEUBENVILLE — With one regularly scheduled meeting remaining before their holiday break, Steubenville Council gave its stamp of approval Tuesday to the city’s 2025 budget plans.

Council voted 6-0 to adopt a series of ordinances finalizing the 2024 budget and adopting their 2025 spending plan as well as a five-year capital improvement plan.

The 2025 budget will take effect Jan. 1: The general fund portion totals $20,827,633; the overall budget, which factors in all other revenue sources as well as general funds, totals just under $57.5 million.

Finance Director Dave Lewis said they managed to budget funding for most departmental requests, and said he’s pleased the vote was unanimous.

“I’m happy that the city was able to pass a balanced general fund budget and that the budget process is now complete,” he said. “We will be filing the budget paperwork with the county later this week.”

second Ward Councilman Tracy McManamon, who chairs council’s finance committee, pointed out they met nearly every month — more than that, sometimes — to discuss revenues and expenses.

“Our focus was on both,” he said. “We, of course, got some bad news about the loss of Eastern Gateway Community College and we projected early on what (that) loss of revenue was going to look like, and we began to experience it in the final quarter of 2024 and rolling into 2025.”

He said they also held “numerous meetings” with department heads to address concerns raised by residents, “with the goal of being 100 percent transparent.”

“A great deal of credit goes to (Lewis, the city’s finance director) and his staff, who’ve done an outstanding job managing our budget, including our funds,” he said, adding, “department heads did a terrific job in managing expenses. A big ‘thank you’ goes out to all of them working with our finance department and, of course, our city manager.”

He also pointed out that “every penny” of their American Rescue Plan (COVID relief) funding has been or will be allocated to eligible projects by the end of December, the deadline. “That means that none of the money will (have to be) returned,” he said.

McManamon also credited the city’s grant writing consultant, Aspire, with “a large number of grants that helped move our city forward,” as well as City Manager Jim Mavromatis, “who kept us all abreast of financial issues within our city as well as managing and working with our finance department all the department heads.

“We reached out to foundations, the state and the federal agencies for help in 2024,” he added, “and because of the team effort, our budget again will be balanced for 2024 and we project some carryover into 2025.”

In addition to finalizing revenues and expenses for the current budget and adopting the same for 2025, council adopted a five-year capital improvement plan for 2025-2029 and also adopted a revised table of organization. All were declared emergencies.

Council also heard the first reading of an ordinance authorizing and directing approval of expenditures of more than $3,000 without a purchase order.

Mayor Jerry Barilla commended city police and Chief Ken Anderson, city firefighters and Chief Carlo Capaldi, and the street department and Supervisor Bob Baird for their assistance with the 2024 Christmas parade.

“It was an outstanding job all of you did,” Barilla said. “It was, I thought, a very successful parade, there were a lot of participants…and a good turnout from the public.”

Council also canceled their regularly scheduled meetings on Dec. 24 (Christmas Eve) as well as Dec. 31 (New Year’s Eve.)