The City of Wooster has closed its book on the first three months of 2025.
So how do things look?
“The first quarter is unremarkable,” said Andrei Dordea, city finance director, “and that’s a good thing.”
Dordea went over the numbers Monday, April 21 during a city council finance committee meeting.
The takeaways included the following:
—“Decent growth in tax receipts,” Dordea said. Individual/residential collections stand at $389,310, up 6.2% from the prior first quarter. Net profit/business was $566,373, down 12.6% from 2024. Withholding was up 4.7% to $5.07 million. All told, total tax receipts are up 2.9%.
—“A little lull in our permitting,” he said. Building permit valuations are down over 2024’s first quarter, from $19.94 million to $13.29 million. The lodging tax also is down slightly, from $46,167 in 2024 to the current $43,442.
—Water billed in gallons is up 6.2%, from 2024’s 239,532 to 2025’s 254,440.
The city’s General Fund shows first-quarter revenues right on budget, with $8.89 million collected — 25.1% of the total $35.41 million expected for all of 2025. “And we’re on or under in expenditures,” Dordea said.
In the first quarter, expenditures have been $8.48 million — or $409,248 under revenue.
The meeting also saw Joel Montgomery, director of administration, offer an operations update, taken in large part from the annual reports filed by each of the city’s operating divisions. Among those were reports from the police and fire departments.
Some takeaways from the WPD include the following:
—Service calls increased 21% over 2023, “due to being proactive in providing business security checks and traffic enforcement,” according to the report.
—Major crimes were down 11%, though felony assaults were up from 44 to 61.
—Community Impact Unit numbers included 59 arrested, 74 undercover buys, 1.5 ounces of heroin seized, 3 ounces of fentanyl seized, 3.7 pounds of methamphetamine seized, 10 pounds of cocaine seized, 40 search warrants served and eight firearms seized.
—The WPD “is pretty much fully staffed,” Montgomery said, with eight new officers hired. The department has two school resource officers, three hospital resource officers, one community relations officer and one canine officer.
—The Officer of the Year was Detective Guy Bremenour.
Takeaways from the WFD include the following:
—There were 4,910 calls for service — 971 for fire and 3,939 for emergency medical services. Of that total, 4,314 were from a residence, 179 from a nursing home, 123 from a street or highway, 157 from a health care facility and 52 from a public building. The number is down slightly from 5,243 calls in 2023 but up 49% from 2000’s 3,298.
“As far as we can see,” Montgomery said, “we project calls will keep going up,” for a variety of reasons, chief among them an aging population. “Those over 80 are expected to double in the next 10 years.”
—A total of 774 fire inspections were completed, 520 adults were trained on fire extinguisher use, there were 627 fire prevention activities and 1,120 children were educated by WFD staff.
—36 missions were flown by the department’s Drone Unit.
—Nathan Miller was named Firefighter of the Year.
Complete annual reports for both departments and all other city divisions can be found at www.woosteroh.com/administration/reports.
