Sturgis facing budget challenges for 2025

STURGIS, S.D. (KELO) — The City of Sturgis is confronting budget challenges they say will require a united effort from city departments, the city council and the mayor.

The Sturgis mayor is asking each city department head to resubmit their budget proposal requests to cut 10% of their total minimal operating budgets. 

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“Each department knows what’s most important for their department and so if we ask for a blanket 10% across the board then it’s a fairness issue to everyone to know that you know, we have to take away as much as the next department,” Director of Communications Deb Holland said.

As for the public, they just want to be more in the know.

“Because of the changes in the city and that’s been public information, yes the community is concerned and we just want to know what direction we are going to do and what we can do to tidy up the finances,” Sturgis Guns Manager Justin Bohn said.

Sturgis has already canceled future events such as this year’s two-day Musicfest and the Off-Road Rally because of budget concerns.

“Go back in time where the money was being made during the rally, 15 to 20 years ago and keep cultivating that relationship with these big corporate sponsors and keep promoting it,” Bohn said.

“The mayor and her administrative team have been working on crunching those numbers to see how it looks now, but they hope to bring a preliminary budget to the council on September 3rd,” Holland said.

In some cases, fees for specific municipal services have not increased in 10 or 15 years. That’s one thing the city is looking at possibly changing.

Sturgis is looking at new ways to increase revenue in each of their departments for 2025 and beyond.