The New Orleans City Council on Thursday (Nov. 21) approved a $1.8 billion-plus city budget for next year, adding more than $69 million in new funding to Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s executive budget proposal — with money going to increase departmental staffing, bolster services to combat homelessness and ease a massive deficit faced by the city’s school system, among other priorities. 

“This is work done by many different people and expresses the priorities not only of the councilmembers but the people that they represent,” Councilmember Joe Giarrusso, who leads the budget committee, said at the top of Thursday’s meeting.

The 2025 budget includes funding for employee pay raises, public health initiatives and a small number of pilot projects – from a tire clean-up incentive program to a city-provided sound consultation for music venues.

Though Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montaño had earlier warned of smaller departmental budgets following the exhaustion of federal pandemic relief funds, city officials said the budget came out of fruitful collaboration between the council and executive leadership and ultimately prioritizes public safety, infrastructure and quality-of-life measures to the benefit of residents.

“The adoption of the 2025 budget is the result of a thoughtful, collaborative and detailed process,” Montaño said in a statement. “Thanks to strategic and prudent fiscal stewardship over the past few years, we are able to move forward in 2025 with a budget that fully supports the agencies delivering essential public services while also investing in opportunities to drive economic growth in our communities and key priority sectors.”

At the meeting, councilmembers highlighted specific initiatives that the council had championed for next year’s budget, including an additional $10 million to the Office of Homeless Services and Strategies.

Councilmember Lesli Harris said her office tirelessly fought for the funding, especially after Troop NOLA, the contingent of state police troopers deployed to the city, unilaterally swept encampments in advance of a weekend of Taylor Swift concerts at the Superdome. 

The sweeps were ordered by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry over fierce objections from officials in the Cantrell administration, who said the action would jeopardize an ambitious, long-running effort to find housing for hundreds of unhoused residents in the city.  

“We’ve seen over the last few weeks how our unhoused community has been demonized by the governor,” Harris said. “[OHSS] is in dire need of more boots on the ground to support and help the unhoused community.”

The 2025 budget is the last budget that Cantrell, who is term-limited and cannot run for her position again, will administer as mayor and the final budget in her three-year plan to stabilize city finances following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

“It takes a village and the spirit of working together to make sustainable investments in our most important resource, and that is the people of New Orleans,” Cantrell said in a statement released after the adoption of the budget.

Though the budget discussion was largely celebratory, councilmembers raised concerns about anticipated cuts to federal funding following the election of Donald Trump.“We are going to have to look at our future as a result of federal cuts that will happen – I want to underscore will happen – to cities and municipalities,” Giarrusso said.

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Katie Jane Fernelius reports on the local government for Verite. Prior to joining Verite, she was an independent journalist and producer. Over the course of her career, she’s reported for and worked...