Los Alamos County Council has voted 6-1 to approve a $367,980,440 budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 during Wednesday night’ final hearing in Council Chambers. Courtesy/LAC
By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com
Los Alamos County Council voted 6-1 to approve a $367,980,440 budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 Wednesday night during its final hearing. Councilor David Reagor voted against the budget.
In a related matter, Council voted 6-1, with Reagor opposed, to approve a motion directing staff to return to council no later than Oct. 31 with a 1/2 cent gross receipt tax increase that would be effective starting July 1, 2026 for FY2027 to support the County’s Long Range Financial Protection, including a 1/4 cent recurring transfer to a housing fund. This is in response to projections that the County’s GRT will decline in future fiscal years as well as provide funds for more affordable housing.
Before passing the budget, council discussed several items that were set aside for more consideration throughout the course of the budget hearings. These included getting more clarification on the County’s regional funding and risk management as well as the County Clerk’s budget option for indexing and redacting historical documents. For this budget option, County Clerk Michael Redondo said his preference was to continue to do this work in-house while investigating emerging technologies such as AI. He explained he felt this was a better return on investment and would save money.
Finally, council approved 5-2, with Reagor and Councilor Beverly Neal-Clinton opposed, to tentatively approve all three budget options in the Police Department’s budget, which includes hiring a sergeant and an officer for the traffic and speed unit, purchasing two outfitted patrol vehicles for traffic and speed camera duties and purchasing speed cameras. Reagor said the Police Department should focus on hiring more officers before pursuing speed cameras and Neal-Clinton said she felt having more officers on the road would lead to better driving behaviors, not speed cameras.
Reagor put his opposition to the budget bluntly: “…I think this is a terrible budget and we should actually do some thinking about what we are trying to do to the County here. This is just rubber stamping everything that comes out of staff and is just not a useful council; we don’t even need to be here.”
He noted that there are a lot of uncertainties about the federal budget and pointed out that projections for the laboratory budget reveal it to be flattening. To respond to these uncertainties with the County’s GRT, Reagor said he supports delaying or cutting many of the slated capital improvement projects, besides the broadband project and housing.
Not everyone shared his views.
Council Chair Theresa Cull noted, “We can only project based on what we’re seeing and what we’re anticipating. What we got before us is a good projection.”
She added that the council will be receiving quarterly financial briefings to keep abreast of the County’s financial situation.