PARADISE >> Paradise’s Town Council received a presentation for its upcoming fiscal year budget, which boasts a large increase from previous years — more than doubling the current budget.

The council had a special session Wednesday covering 2025-26 finances. While the budget will be officially voted on during the council’s July 8 meeting, the town’s 2024-25 fiscal year ends on June 30. Mayor Steve Crowder said the town has historically adopted its budget in the first meeting of July.

“It has to be done in July, and our first meeting is on July 8,” Crowder said. “We always seem to adopt it in the July meeting, and to the best of my recollection, it has always been done in July.”

Crowder said the council approved new salaries already for the coming fiscal year during a previous meeting, adding that those salaries still begin on July 1.

“We ran through it Wednesday and asked our questions, so it should be a matter of approving what we heard,” Crowder said.

Aimee Beleu, finance director and town treasurer, provided the update to the council during Wednesday’s special meeting, where she explained how the budget has evolved since the Camp Fire, as has the number of town employees.

Paradise is working with a total of $134.65 million for 2025-26, a figure that rose sharply from 2024-25’s $64.82 million. These budgets are considerably higher thanks to funding for recovery costs when compared to the 2016-17 fiscal year budget just before the fire, which totaled at $23.54 million. The town is currently staffed at 100.4 full-time positions; before the Camp Fire, it had 86.24.

Beleu noted that the money is bolstered through various grants and likely won’t be the norm for future budgets.

“The world is our oyster at this point; but let’s be real, things are going to dry up in a few years, and we’re possibly not going to need the same staffing levels,” Beleu said.”But your first responders and all those people are a fixture, and so there are some things that aren’t going to change and then there are other things that will change.”

For the town’s general fund, the operating budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year is merely $8,556,293, with total general fund resources at $23,413,041. On top of that, the working budget is looking at $1,330,000 from Measure V, a half-cent sales tax.

The Paradise Town Council generally meets at 9 a.m. on the second and fourth Tuesday of the month at its chambers located at 5555 Skyway in Paradise. Meetings are free and open to the public.