The City of Twin Falls, Idaho does not have any general obligation bonds. That is the Debt Management section of the city's own FY2027 Recommended Budget, page 38, stated flatly and without qualification. The city holds a Moody's issuer rating of Aa2. Bonds it has issued through the Idaho Bond Bank carry Aa1.
And in the same document, on page 25, the city budgeted a 0% increase in employee health insurance premiums for FY2027, without changing plans or cutting benefits. That is the second consecutive year with no premium increase.
Every FY2027 figure in this piece is from the City Manager's Recommended Budget, which is proposed, not adopted. More on that at the end, because it matters.
The flat health line is the outlier, not the norm
Boise's employee health insurance fund went from $26,222,700 adopted for FY2025 to $34,256,880 proposed for FY2027, an increase of 30.6%. That is an adopted-to-proposed comparison and it overstates spending growth: Boise's FY2025 actual came in at $31,283,633, so measured actual-to-proposed the two-year increase is 9.5%. Either way the line moved.
At the state level, Colorado's statewide health, life and dental common policy appropriation went from $495,691,564 all funds enacted for FY2025-26 to $596,286,691 all funds in the FY2026-27 Long Bill as introduced. That is +20.3% in one year, with one caveat the Joint Budget Committee narrative supplies itself: a 1.5% one-time reduction of the base salary estimate is parked inside that line item, so it is not purely insurance cost.
Against those, a zero is unusual. Twin Falls attributes it to going self-funded. The State of Idaho approved the city's self-funded plan application, it took effect in FY2026, and the city writes on page 55 that the plan "did not cost the City more in health insurance premiums than the FY 2025 plan."
One limit on that finding. Neither budget book publishes a dollar figure for total employee health benefit cost. No aggregate spend, no per-employee premium, no claims reserve. The only health numbers in the document are the $900 the city puts into each employee's VEBA account and the $1,000 into each HSA. So "0%" is the city's characterisation of its own premium funding, and there is no published total to check it against. The Insurance Fund line of $868,636 for FY2027 is risk management, not employee health, and should not be used as a substitute.
Zero GO debt is not zero debt
The distinction is real and the city documents it on the same page. Twin Falls has two outstanding Wastewater revenue bonds. As of 1 October 2026, principal and interest to maturity on those bonds total $24,377,100. Those are repaid from utility user fees, not from property taxes. The city's legal debt limit under Idaho Code 50-1019 is $134,589,790, being 2% of the prior year market value of $6,729,489,481.
So the accurate statement is narrower than the headline: no property-tax-backed debt, and $24.4 million of user-fee-backed debt to maturity.
The balance sheet behind it: audited fund balance and net position at the end of FY2025 was $115,652,588, split $71,363,730 governmental, $43,817,978 enterprise and $470,880 internal service. The components sum exactly. Of that, the city estimates $38,891,329 is unrestricted cash reserve after commitments.
What restraint still costs
Twin Falls' General Fund goes from $40,722,313 adopted for FY2026 to $42,916,771 proposed for FY2027, an increase of $2,194,458 or 5.39%. The all-funds budget barely moves: $101,056,414 adopted to $102,179,406 proposed, +1.11%, and still 6.85% below the $109,692,892 approved for FY2025.
Inside that General Fund:
| Item, General Fund only | FY2026 adopted | FY2027 proposed |
|---|---|---|
| Police | $13,583,612 | $14,331,719 |
| Fire | $7,646,131 | $7,856,452 |
| Police and fire combined | $21,229,743 | $22,188,171 |
| Total General Fund expenditures | $40,722,313 | $42,916,771 |
| Police and fire share | 52.13% | 51.70% |
The 51.70% is arithmetic on three printed numbers from the same table, same column, same fund. The city does not print the combined share itself. Add the Communications Center, the city's separately budgeted 911 dispatch operation at $1,668,315, and the FY2027 proposed share becomes 55.59%.
Two things follow. First, the share is flat to slightly falling, not climbing. Second, half the general fund of a plain Idaho city is police and fire, and that is what a general fund is once the county carries the jail, the courts and the prosecutor on its own levy.
A trap worth flagging: the police department's all-in total across the General and Capital Improvement Funds rises 22.69%, to $17,952,412. Do not read that as policing operations growing 22.69%. A single non-recurring item, a $2,800,000 evidence storage and training centre funded from cash reserves, accounts for most of it. The operating line rises 5.51%. Fire's all-in total falls 2.53% as capital drops off.
The property tax build, and $73,143 that does not reconcile
Total city property tax collections go from $32,896,123 adopted for FY2026 to $34,624,436 proposed for FY2027, an increase of $1,728,313 or 5.25%.
The city itemises where the increase comes from on page 89, and Twin Falls documents this better than most:
- 3% statutory increase: $984,689, the full amount allowed under Idaho Code 63-802. The city took all of it.
- New construction and annexation growth formula: $473,951, sitting on a new construction roll of $95,062,222 with $0 of annexation.
- Forgone balance recovered: $342,816, equal to 1% of property tax revenue, which is the maximum recoverable for ongoing operations under 2021's House Bill 389.
Those three sum to $1,801,456. The stated year-over-year increase in collections is $1,728,313. The gap is $73,143, and the document does not explain it. Both figures are printed in the city's own budget book, on the same page, and they do not reconcile. Use $1,728,313 as the headline increase and treat the three components as the authorities the city relied on, not as an exact bridge.
Meanwhile the levy rate falls, from $5.06 to $5.05 per $1,000 of taxable value, because taxable value grew 5.6% to $6,782,997,005, the largest in city history and up from $2.360 billion in 2017. The taxpayer-visible result is the usual one: a lower rate and a higher bill. City tax on the median owner-occupied home goes from $1,205.73 to $1,247.79, an increase of $42.07 a year. That is the city portion only. County, school district and other overlapping levies are not in this document.
The forgone balance is nearly spent. After the FY2027 draw, $328,675 remains, against a peak of $2,186,253 in FY2017 and FY2018. That lever runs out.
356.50 FTE, and a denominator the city argues with itself about
Budgeted FTE across all funds goes to 356.50 for FY2027 proposed, from 354.00 in FY2026 and 351.50 in FY2025. A net addition of 2.5 positions.
Departments requested 11 new positions and several upgrades totalling more than $1.75 million in first-year cost. Two were funded, at $264,096: a project manager and a school resource officer whose cost is 90% reimbursed by the school district. No upgrades were funded. Among the denials were two emergency communication officers for the 911 centre ($186,132) and a half-time fire prevention officer upgrade ($54,077).
On the city's own population estimate of 57,077, that is 6.2 city employees per 1,000 residents. The city prints the counter-argument in the same paragraph: Twin Falls is the regional hub for an area of nearly 275,000, its daytime census exceeds 115,000, and on that denominator the figure drops to 3.07 per 1,000. Publish both or neither. Note also that 57,077 is the city's own estimate and was not independently verified against a Census Bureau vintage.
Pension cost is the standard Idaho municipal rate. PERSI employer contributions are 11.96% of payroll for general members and 13.98% for public safety members, both effective 1 April 2025 and both still current. The public safety rate went down at that date, from 14.65%. Twin Falls has been a PERSI employer since 1 January 1971. Neither budget book breaks out PERSI dollars, so the city's actual employer contribution and its share of the system's net pension liability are not available from these documents.
What is not settled
The FY2027 budget was not adopted as of the 9 August 2026 research date, and "no budget has been adopted" would also be wrong. The city's budget calendar on page 48 shows Council adopting a preliminary FY2027 budget on 3 August 2026, which is the Idaho Code 50-1002 and 50-1003 device that fixes the maximum appropriation printed in the published hearing notice. The public hearing and final Council adoption are both scheduled for 24 August 2026. The levy is certified to Twin Falls County the week of 24 August, and the appropriations ordinance is scheduled for publication by 30 September 2026. Whether the final budget was formally adopted, and whether it matches the recommended figures, could not be confirmed from the documents in hand.
Fact-check notes and sources
- City of Twin Falls, Idaho Recommended Budget Fiscal Year 2026-2027, 220 pages, tfid.org Document Center view 8212. Source of every FY2027 figure here. Status: City Manager's recommended budget, proposed, not adopted. Key pages: p.19 budget message totals, p.25 and p.55 health premium and compensation, p.31 fund balance, p.32 forgone balance, p.38 debt, p.48 budget calendar, p.49 and p.51 budget summary, p.73 to p.75 personnel and FTE, p.89 property tax, p.121 and p.126 police and fire expenditure by category.
- City of Twin Falls, Idaho Adopted Budget Fiscal Year 2025-2026, 256 pages, tfid.org Document Center view 7437. Source of FY2026 adopted figures and an independent check on the FY2027 book's FY2026 comparison columns, which agree.
- PERSI Contribution Rates, persi.idaho.gov, rate history table, row effective 1 April 2025. Stale figures of 11.61% and 11.85% circulate online; those are the 1 October 1994 row of the same table.
- Boise figures are from the Boise FY2025 Adopted and FY2027 Proposed budget four-year summaries. Colorado figures are from the FY2025-26 Joint Budget Committee Appropriations Report and the FY2026-27 Long Bill Narrative, Appendix B. The FY2026-27 Colorado figure is the Long Bill as introduced.
- Two Twin Falls documents were not obtainable: the preliminary budget adopted 3 August 2026, and the certified L-2 property tax form, which does not exist yet for FY2027. The $34,624,436 is anticipated collections, not a certified levy.
- The city's own FY2026 book and FY2027 book disagree on the FY2026 levy rate ($5.07 versus $5.06), FY2026 taxable value ($6,411,454,811 versus $6,423,360,685) and the FY2026 median home tax ($1,221.87 versus $1,205.73). The pattern is estimate versus final. This piece uses the FY2027 book's basis throughout so the comparisons are internally consistent.
Related reading
- Colorado and Idaho city budgets: what public safety actually takes: how police and fire shares compare across five cities, and why the denominators are not the same kind of number.
- Colorado and Idaho state budgets, from the taxpayer's side: Medicaid, general fund growth and what each legislature actually enacted.
- Colorado and Idaho local taxes: levy rates, overlapping districts and where a homeowner's bill actually goes.
- The budget squeeze, charted: the cost lines growing faster than the funds that pay for them.
This post is informational, not legal, financial or municipal advisory advice. Budget figures are appropriations as adopted or proposed and change through the year. Mentions of named municipalities, districts and retirement systems are nominative fair use. No affiliation is implied.
