Board of Aldermen 6-23-2020 Page 21
President Wilshire
All set, Alderman Jette?
Alderman Jette
Yes, thank you.
Alderman Clemons
Thank you. So | had originally looked at that Memo and thought that the money, my initial though was that
the money could go towards the tax rate, reduce the tax burden further. | can understand putting it into
Contingency. However, | feel that a better use of the money would be to put $255,000.00 back into the Fire
Department Budget so that they can fully fund the Firefighter's Contract. So | don’t know if it is appropriate
to amend the motion or if | can do that but that’s what | would vote to do.
Alderman Dowd
My suggestion would be do we do this one step at a time or it is going to get too confusing. So let’s do the
one change and then we will address anything else that people have towards the Budget.
Alderman Clemons
Sounds like a good idea.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you. Alderman Dowd could you just help me understand, what is the purpose of moving it from
(audio cuts out).
Alderman Dowd
It gives us more flexibility when we determine how we would want to spend that money. The Healthcare
Account can handle the loss of that amount of money because of all the explanations in the June 9 Memo
and further discussions that we had. And the reason is that that was available was because a lot of the
things that we had anticipated paying for in health expenses, were not realized because people weren’t
going to the hospital for normal things because of COVID-19. We also feel that given a couple of days from
now that that’s also going to be the same reason that people aren’t going to be rushing to the hospital
under the same conditions to get what | would call normal medical things taken care of. They will put them
off for a bit further, the longer they put them off, the more savings we have. It has been determined that a
half million dollars would be better placed in General Contingency so we can address other things, if
necessary.
Alderwoman Lu
Just a follow up, so essentially we are doing it now so we don’t have to do it later.
Alderman Dowd
Easier to do it now.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you.
