Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing — May 20, 2020 Page 6
This was proposed back in early February in order to give the Board of Aldermen time to consider the many
aspects of it, in a way that they can deliberate about it with enough time to be able to discuss and understand
everything.
The fact that we are now in COVID-19 may, and | am saying “should” affect the way, change the way that we
consider the Budget that we need to enact for the next Fiscal Year. But to reiterate, the Budget was
proposed before COVID-19. Why don’t we go to the next slide? COVID-19 has changed the City and it has
changed the way we are operating now and we will operate City Government in the future. The non-essential
employees are now working remotely but we are designing changes for City Hall that will enable people to
work remotely, some people, a longer term and will rebuild some of the internal rooms and departments of
City Hall where there | a lot of public contact. All this will be done in a way that protects members of the
public and protects employees.
So we know that life, not only City Government, but life will be different for some time. Of course it is difficult
for all of us; I’ve had trouble adjusting to some of these changes like these remote meetings. But we are
getting through this together and life will be changed including the way City Government performs its
responsibilities in some ways that are probably going to be permanent. But as we look to this coming Fiscal
Year and the Fiscal Years beyond, we must work smart, we must be disciplined and we must be unified. So
far, the community has done very, very well with that. If we do those things, we will come out of this on the
other side stronger than we were before. Why don’t we go to the next slide?
Looking at this Budget with COVID-19 in mind and with the circumstances that we are faced with in mind,
here are some of the main objectives. We want to continue to maintain quality services. You know what
those are; Police, Fire, Schools, where we educate over 11,000 children; our Public Works, picking up the
garbage, plowing the streets and all of the other services that we offer. We want to do those in a safe way
that protects, again, members of the public and the employees that work for the City to contain and prevent
the spread of the COVID-19 Virus.
Certainly, a major objective now, it always was an objective but now let’s underline this, we need to keep the
tax rate increase as low as we possibly can. Some of the economic circumstances we are facing, | will
discuss those as we get into the slides. But we really need to keep our eye on the tax rate more than ever
this year. The next bullet suggests that one of our strategies is the strategic use of one-time State Aid. So
there is State Aid that we are getting that is only going to last for this one year. We will get into some of
those details as we see further slides, but we want to make sure that we are smart in the way we use this
one-time money.
And finally, we want to have an effective COVID-19 Cost Strategy to maximize the use of Federal Funds.
What we mean there is we are using now City money, which is being used to clean buildings, extra overtime,
extra IT, Software that’s Information Technology. The Board of Aldermen has already appropriated
$200,000.00 for those purposes. Also there will be other expenses definitely incurred, rebuilding parts of City
Hall, as | mentioned to change the flow of traffic. Also, overtime in various Departments and working with
Justin Kates, the Emergency Management Director and all of our visions, we want to make sure that we
recover as much of these additional costs as we possibly can. We have received assurances about this from
the Governor, from FEMA that’s the Federal Emergency Agency. But we want to keep that always in mind so
that we recover as many local tax dollars as we possibly can. Let’s go to the next slide.
Now the Budget, as proposed, includes an increase in health care costs of $3 million dollars or 8.6%. This is
a major, major increase in a large line item. A $3 million dollar increase in one line item is a difficult financial
challenge to handle. But this is something we have to do because we have the legal obligation, of course, to
provide healthcare to our employees as our 17 Union Contracts require.
