Amid budget crunch, these Lee’s Summit city jobs, services are scaling back
Lee’s Summit City Council members have signed off on about $500 million in city budgets for the 2027 fiscal year, which officials said would maintain a hiring freeze for a swath of positions and reduce some city services amid a budget crunch.
City Manager Mark Dunning said the budgets City Council members voted to advance Tuesday night, which would go into effect July 1, would not cut current city employees but would maintain a hiring freeze the city implemented last month on around 30 open positions across a range of departments. Frozen jobs range from police and fire, administration, legal, cultural arts, public works and fleet operations, he said.
Dunning said that while hiring for a group of around 20 vacant police officer positions would not be frozen, the police department would take a phased approach to filling those roles throughout the year.
Dunning said the city will analyze frozen positions throughout the year and consider what jobs could be brought back.
“It’s not to say that these positions will be frozen for an entire year,” he said. “We don’t know that, but what a hiring freeze allows us to do is take a methodical approach to restructuring, thinking differently about how we can deliver services, reorganizing, whatever that may be. That’s the approach we’re taking with this hiring freeze.”
The cuts came as city officials worked through an early funding gap of around $13 million between projected revenues and what city departments had requested for the new fiscal year. That gap included millions in commitments to pay raises for city employees and came as city officials lamented uncertainty around Jackson County’s property assessments, a smaller-than-expected growth in tax revenues, increased healthcare costs and a larger commitment the city owes to the retirement program for local government employees.
Among the city efforts Dunning said would be scaled back were facility maintenance, mowing and right-of-way upkeep in lower-priority areas, curb and sidewalk repairs and services in public-facing departments.
“There could be increased turnaround times,” he said. “Depending on what sector of services are we providing, that may be different, but generally, less people doesn’t automatically equate to a higher level of service.”
Dunning also said the city’s fire and police departments have been asked to be “more mindful” of overtime expenses. City staff said the budget advanced Tuesday night included about $2.6 million in public safety overtime for the year.
Council members authorized Dunning to bring back to them an additional proposal to dip into reserve funds to pay for a group of public safety programs, like downtown police foot patrols, police community and youth engagement efforts, overtime for training for fire department staff and other items.
The new budget funds pay increases that the city committed to under new labor agreements with unions representing firefighters, police and public works employees, as well as 3.5% merit pay increases for employees who aren’t represented by labor unions and 4% top-of-range pay increases for those employees, Dunning said.
Alongside the budget process, the city had been working through gathering information for a pay study for unrepresented city staff in recent months, but Dunning informed council members Tuesday that the city had parted ways with a consultant on that project after staff “did not feel that the work product was meeting our expectations.”
“Timing’s not great,” he said in a brief update on the project, which he said he still wanted to complete.
Budget manager Eric Stoyanov told council members that staff were factoring in the country’s current economic uncertainty as they projected sales tax revenues for the year, but said they had estimated a “pretty healthy” growth compared to recent years. He noted the potential boost that the city’s new Costco store could bring as it opens in a few months.
“I know Costco is a big talking point, but how much does Costco cannibalize other businesses?” he said. “Are people buying more food there instead of Hy-Vee? It’s kind of hard to know the exact impact until we’re able to see the true data for our area.”
This story was originally published June 3, 2026 at 7:22 PM.
