WHEELING CITY MANAGER ROBERT HERRON

WHEELING — Officials in the city of Wheeling are already looking ahead to the 2026-27 fiscal year as work has begun on crafting the city’s next general fund budget.

The 2026-27 fiscal year begins on July 1, but city leaders must approve the municipality’s projected figures for expenses and revenues and submit them to the state well before the start of the new fiscal year.

“We are beginning our budget schedule process,” Wheeling City Manager Robert Herron said.

A number of work sessions are scheduled to take place over the course of the next month as Wheeling leaders hammer out a new annual budget for the city. Last year in March, members of city council approved the current fiscal year budget — one that topped $40 million for the first time in Wheeling’s history.

The city manager typically meets with department heads at the beginning of each calendar year to begin the process of mulling projections and requests for the coming fiscal year budget. A draft proposal is then provided to members of city council, who review the numbers and discuss possible changes before legislation to adopt the budget is brought before them in mid-March.

Herron shared key dates that will be coming up for budget discussions in the coming weeks.

“There’s a budget work session scheduled for March 3 at 4:45 p.m., a council work session on the budget for March 10 at 5 p.m. and then city council consideration of the general fund budget for approval at the March 17, 2026 meeting,” he said. “I will distribute the budget to council on Feb. 27. So that process is coming up.”

The city’s general fund and Coal Severance budgets will be approved and forwarded to the state auditor’s office. Once the balanced budgets are approved by the state, they will be sent back to city council, and there will be a “laying of the levy rate” for the coming fiscal year.

Despite the fact that last year’s city budget was bigger than ever before, Wheeling officials noted that the current budget for fiscal year 2025-26 would be notably tighter. City leaders had to take measures to keep expenses in check.

There has since been progress in correcting areas that had created challenges. Overtime issues had previously risen above budgeted parameters for the city’s public safety departments. City officials attributed the additional expenses to vacancies within the departments that resulted in the necessity for overtime pay to staff members covering extra shifts.

Since then, many of those vacancies on the public safety forces have been filled, and spending on personnel within those departments has been stabilized.

For nearly four years before the 2025 calendar year, city leaders had somewhat of a fiscal cushion of federal pandemic relief funds from the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) Act and ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) available. In fact, the city had nearly $30 million in ARPA funding that had to be allocated to eligible projects in the community by the end of 2024.

City leaders have had to take a more conservative approach to spending since then as recovery funds in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have been depleted.

During recent monthly meetings of the Finance Committee of Wheeling City Council, officials have noted that the city’s fiscal footing has remained relatively solid, and revenue streams through the course of the current fiscal year have consistently outpaced budgeted projections.