The Dillon Town Council has approved a 2025 budget that puts money toward a potential agreement to provide police services in Keystone, town park improvements and a boat ramp project.

Dillon finance director Mary Kay Perrotti told council last Tuesday, Dec. 10, that the final budget has a balanced general fund with revenues covering expenditures by about $300,000. Only minor changes have been made to the general fund since the council approved the draft budget last month, Perrotti said. The council voted unanimously to approve the budget. 

​​”We are in a rising-expense environment. We have wage increases this year. We have health insurance expense increases, various inflationary increases that we’ve had to absorb,” Perrotti told the council during the Nov. 12 public hearing when the draft budget was approved. “So balancing the general fund was definitely a challenge this year, but we did it.”

Total general fund expenditures in the budget amount to over $21 million, leaving an end balance of $535,000 in reserves, Perrotti said in an email to Summit Daily News.

The town’s finance department continues to project conservative revenues in 2025, Perrotti said. By the end of 2024, it is estimated that the town will have raised about $6.3 million in sales tax revenue — and those revenues are projected to remain flat in 2025, according to the budget.

Perrotti said that to help balance the budget, it was decided that $400,000 budgeted for summer recreational activities would be removed. She said that that item is “tabled” for now but could be added back into the budget if funds allow.

Perrotti also said that the budget contains about $1.1 million for Dillon to provide law enforcement services in Keystone, but she noted that the two towns have not yet signed an intergovernmental agreement related to that.

Capital projects in the 2025 budget include $100,000 for town hall improvements, $150,000 for a town hall generator, $150,000 for marina docks, $200,000 for a facility analysis for police and $500,000 for a marina bulkhead and boat ramp construction project. 

The budget also includes about $500,000 in park improvements, including $250,000 for a town park plaza and $65,000 for improvements at the disc golf course.