KINGSBURG – Final figures for fiscal year 2024-25 show the city of Kingsburg generated over $1 million more in tax revenues than it initially predicted.
Taxes collected between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, brought $6.7 million into the city’s general fund and $2.67 million into the Measure E fund, according to a report City Manager Alex Henderson provided to the Kingsburg City Council on Sept. 17. With an 8% bump in tax dollars over the past year, Henderson noted that the city’s revenue has been trending slightly higher each year since 2020.
“We’re coming out of the pandemic still but we have continued to see sort of steady growth, which is good,” Henderson said. “It makes it easier for us to budget from year to year.”
As part of the report, Henderson reviewed the city’s main sources of tax revenue and also provided a breakdown of how residents’ taxes are distributed. Kingsburg supports a majority of its operations through property taxes, sales taxes and fees for various licenses and permits.
The city’s largest chunk of tax revenue came from property taxes, including nearly $1.8 million from direct property taxes and nearly $1.6 million from motor vehicle fees, which are considered taxes on vehicles in-lieu of a personal property tax.
Property tax revenue grew by 7.93% compared to the previous year, in line with rising property tax assessment values across the county. Motor vehicle fee revenue grew by 5.2%. Out of all the property taxes Kingsburg residents pay, 45% goes toward local schools, 27% goes toward the county, 21% toward the city and 7% toward special districts.
Revenues from permits and fees grew by a significant 44.7%, totaling more than $1.3 million for fiscal year 2024-25 compared to $937,000 for fiscal year 2023-24. Henderson said some of this can be attributed to larger engineering fees related to commercial development in the city from the last year. How much money the city brings in through this revenue source also tends to vary based on the timing of development activity, he said.
“Some of our larger building permit fees are the new single-family (home) starts, so some of it is based upon how well (developers) do at selling homes,” Henderson said. “I would say, in general, we take a conservative approach in terms of what we expect from those fee collections.”
Despite growth in all other areas, the city’s transient occupancy tax revenue decreased by nearly 4% from the previous year. Henderson said all this really represents, however, is a slower than average second quarter of 2025 for the Fairfield Inn. The 12% tax on guests who stay in Kingsburg’s few hotels, motels and Airbnbs brought in just under $386,000 in 2024-25, about $15,000 less than in 2023-24.
For sales tax, the city’s most unpredictable source of revenue, Kingsburg received more than $1.6 million from its share of the statewide sales tax, known as the 1% Bradley-Burns tax. This represented a growth of 3.1% from 2023-24 — a welcome sight for the city after its sales tax revenue grew by 1.58% between 2021-22 and 2022-23 and just 0.62% between 2022-23 and 2023-24.
When people in Kingsburg pay 8.975% in sales tax, Henderson explained that nearly 4% of it goes toward the state’s general fund. Nearly 1.5% goes toward various county uses, 1.56% goes toward county realignment, 1% is accounted for with the Bradley-Burns tax and the remaining 1% goes toward Kingsburg’s Measure E fund.
Despite both being a 1% sales tax, Kingsburg’s Measure E tax brought in $2.67 million compared to the $1.6 million the city received from the Bradley-Burns tax. This is because Measure E, which funds the police and fire departments, is a transaction and use tax, meaning it is applied to anything purchased in or registered for use in the city. This includes vehicles purchased elsewhere but registered with a Kingsburg address or items bought online and delivered to a Kingsburg address.
Measure E revenues grew by 1.5% in 2024-25, a positive sign for the city after a decrease in revenues in 2022-23 and 2023-24.
City council members asked about trends in the city’s revenues but had no other comments to make about the report.
Hot meals for seniors
Also on Sept. 17, the Kingsburg City Council unanimously accepted grant funding from the Kingsburg Health Care District in the amount of $55,000. The grant will be used to support the hot lunch program provided free of charge at the Kingsburg Senior Center.
Community Services Director Adam Castaneda said the grant covers food expenses, general kitchen expenses and other supplies needed to run the program. Castaneda said that ever since the city has moved away from the meal program run by the Fresno-Madera Area Agency on Aging in December 2024, it has seen an influx of seniors coming in for lunches, which are made in-house in the senior center.
“A lot of the other senior centers in the Central Valley rely on county programs to run their programs, and so it’s kind of an honor for Kingsburg to say that we can serve our seniors a little differently,” Castaneda said.
This is the second year in a row the city has received the grant award from the health care district. While the meals come with a suggested donation, no seniors are turned away for their inability to pay, Castaneda said.
“The numbers have been good, and seniors are happy,” Castaneda said.
