Budget Explorer · City of Kansas City

Where the money comes from, and where it goes

Comparable revenue, spending, and debt for City of Kansas City, on the same Census classification used for every city, county, and state in the Library — so the figures line up with peers rather than with the government's own budget book. Latest year: FY ending Apr 30, 2024. City of Kansas City's own FY2027 budget, in its own structure, follows below.

Audited actuals · Census classification · 509K residents

At a glance

Total revenue

$2.77B

$5,437 per resident

Total spending

$2.25B

$4,426 per resident

Spending per resident

$4,426

60th percentile of 71

Debt outstanding

$4.91B

$9,638 per resident · 86th percentile of 70

Own-source share

82%

57th percentile of 71

Capital share

23%

73rd percentile of 71

Where the money comes from

$2.77B total

Own-source revenue (taxes, charges, interest) versus aid from other governments. Utility and trust revenue are shown alongside general revenue but run on their own books.

Property tax$200M7%
General sales tax$443M16%
Selective sales taxes$79M3%
Income taxes$424M15%
License & other taxes$36M1%
Federal aid$304M11%
State & local aid$159M6%
Charges & fees$689M25%
Interest, fines, other$231M8%
Utility revenue$203M7%

Own-source share of general revenue 82% · federal aid 12% · property tax is 17% of taxes

Where it goes

$2.25B total

Current operations plus capital outlay, grouped by Census function. Interest on debt and transfers to other governments are broken out so they are not hidden inside services.

Public safety$622M28%
Transportation$590M26%
Environment & housing$333M15%
Interest on debt$187M8%
General government$183M8%
Utilities (water, power, gas)$104M5%
Culture & recreation$89M4%
Transfers to other governments$72M3%
Health & hospitals$69M3%
Public welfare$5.8M0%

Show top functions with operating vs. capital ▸

Function	Category	Operating	Capital	Total
Fire protection	Public safety	$273M	$61M	$333M
Highways	Transportation	$183M	$146M	$329M
Police protection	Public safety	$272M	$17M	$289M
Air transportation	Transportation	$121M	$131M	$253M
Sewerage	Environment & housing	$124M	$120M	$245M
Water utility	Utilities (water, power, gas)	$104M	—	$104M
Central staff services	General government	$85M	$12M	$97M
Parks & recreation	Culture & recreation	$67M	$21M	$89M
Housing & community development	Environment & housing	$83M	$5.5M	$88M
Health	Health & hospitals	$69M	—	$69M
General (unallocable)	General government	$59M	$7.2M	$66M
Judicial & legal	General government	$12M	—	$12M
Financial administration	General government	$7.6M	—	$7.6M
Parking	Transportation	$7.3M	—	$7.3M

Trend · 3 fiscal years

Nominal dollars. The Census Bureau cautions that single-government series are edited only for aggregates — read direction, not decimals.

Revenue

+9% over 2 yrs

$2.54B → $2.77B

Spending

+7% over 2 yrs

$2.10B → $2.25B

Debt outstanding

+8% over 2 yrs

$4.55B → $4.91B

How it compares · 71 cities and counties in the Library

Percentile within the cohort on each place's latest Census year. Higher is not better — the last column says what a high reading means so you can decide whether it matters here.

Measure	City of Kansas City	Cohort median	Percentile	Higher means
Spending per resident	$4,426	$3,741	60th	more spent per resident
Revenue per resident	$5,437	$3,548	75th	more raised per resident
Taxes per resident	$2,321	$1,328	81st	heavier own-tax load
Debt per resident	$9,638	$3,865	86th	more borrowed per resident
Own-source share of revenue	82%	81%	57th	less dependent on aid
Federal aid share of revenue	12%	7%	82nd	more exposed to federal cuts
Capital share of spending	23%	18%	73rd	more building, less operating
Interest share of spending	8%	4%	91st	more spend servicing debt
Debt ÷ annual revenue	1.77×	1.05×	84th	more leveraged

About this data

Census classification categories, not this government's own budget structure. Figures are audited actuals for the fiscal year shown, not the adopted budget.
The Census Bureau edits unit-level data only to produce state and national aggregates and advises against reading it as a precise time series for any single government; treat year-over-year moves under ~5% as noise.
Employee-retirement-system revenue is excluded (published separately by Census). Utility and insurance-trust revenue are shown separately from general revenue.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances (Individual Unit public-use files), unit 292095186236 (Kansas City City). Retrieved 2026-09-07. Classification manual.

Spot an error, or know a better source for this place's adopted budget? Suggest an edit on the assessment.

Adopted budget · FY2027

City of Kansas City's own budget, in its own structure, read from its published budget book and checked against the total the document itself prints. This is the current year — more recent than the Census series above, but only comparable to this city's own history. Totals cover 5 functions.

$2.61B total

Infrastructure and Accessibility$1.24B48%
Public Safety$743M29%
Housing and Healthy Communities$314M12%
Inclusive Growth and Development$173M7%
Finance and Governance$137M5%

Read from the city's online budget book — all funds, adopted for FY2026-27.
The five goals sum exactly to the city's printed total of $2,606,728,154.
These are Kansas City's five budget goals rather than departments. The city publishes department figures only on a separate page per department, and its consolidated fund-by-department view is an embedded chart with no underlying table.
This is a coarser breakdown than the other places here, and is the finest citywide one the city publishes as a table.
The city's open-data portal has a line-item budget series, but it stops at FY2023-24.
Source: FY2026-27 Adopted Budget (Expenditure by Goal) (published budget book), retrieved 2026-09-08. Open the source document.

Looking for how this fits City of Kansas City's capacity to deliver? The fiscal dimension, binding constraint, and pathways live in the City of Kansas City capacity assessment.