City Council made their final budget decisions with presentations from human services (ASSET), arts funding (COTA) and reaffirmed the city’s commitment to “equity, fairness, inclusion and justice.”

According to Assistant City Manager Brian Phillips, several COTA organizations did not receive the full amount of their funding request from the city due to there being “more requests than it would be possible to fund.”

29 agencies and 94 services requested $5.1 million in funds under ASSET, with $1.8 million contributed from the city of Ames.

“There are efforts to try to resolve [homelessness],” assistant city manager Pa Goldbeck said. “There’s not going to be one silver bullet to solve this and so I think we’re trying different things here and there to try to get at how we help our community be housed.”

Agencies funded by ASSET include NAMI, YSS, the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

The council also moved two projects listed in this year’s budget to next: the conceptual rec center plan and the new fire station alerting system.

“If we would have put [the projects] in the current year, they probably wouldn’t be started until the next fiscal year,” city manager Steve Schainker said.

The council reaffirmed a resolution from 2016, stating, “The city of Ames welcomes all people and recognizes the rights of individuals to live their lives with dignity, free of discrimination; and… the city of Ames will continue to work in making our services and programs accessible and open to all individuals.”

In addition, the council approved a lease for a new digital billboard along Highway 30 and directed zoning changes to allow it, with the removal of two existing billboards. 

April 8 is slated for the final public hearing to adopt a property tax levy for fiscal year 2025/26.