Board of Aldermen 03-09-2021 Page 18
Personally | think that it would be better for us, as we go through the Budget Review Process, there are a lot of
worthwhile projects; downtown is one of them. But there are a lot of others that are also competing with those
limited funds. And as we look at the Budget, as we make decisions about what we are going to fund and what
we are not going to fund, | think everybody ought to be competing on a level playing field and | don’t think that
we ought to be taking $100,000.00 out of context and dedicating it to the Downtown Improvement Committee
and then we have to cut something else, somewhere else.
| think all of these projects ought to be on a level playing field, they ought to compete fairly and if we decide,
yes we need to spend $100,000.00 on the Downtown Improvement Committee we can do that. But if we
decide we can’t afford it this year, we can decide not to do that. So | am in the uncomfortable position of
saying that | think we are ahead of the game here. We are making a decision about allocating money from
next year’s Budget without considering all the other things that may need it. So for those reasons | am going to
vote against this.
President Wilshire
OK, Alderman Clemons?
Alderman Clemons
Thank you, Madam President. So | actually agree with what Alderman Jette was just saying, which is the
reason why the Ordinance is written so that it doesn’t take any money from this year’s budget, it takes money
from the 2022 budget of July that year. What this Ordinance does is it takes a calculated sum of $100,000.00
in parking revenue and it puts that as an earmark towards the Budget in 2022, not the Budget that is coming up
in this July. So the reason for that being, is that because the Downtown Improvement Committee does have a
substantial sum in there, my hope is that we can get to do some of the festivals and things, especially within
light of the fact that the vaccine roll out is going much faster than expected. The CDC is probably going to
update guidelines to say that once most people are vaccinated we will be able to resume life as it was. At least
that’s the hope anyway; | hope we can get there.
So with that being said, there’s some opportunities there hopefully this summer and certainly in the fall to do
things like the Holiday Stroll and some other music festivals and things like that. The Downtown Improvement
Committee has plenty of money in there to do those things right now. So we don’t need to fund the Downtown
Improvement Committee this year because they do have a substantial fund and they were able to save that
money by not being able to do those things last year. So with that being said, the goal here is to ensure that
we are putting out the barriers, at least | assume we are going to do that. That parking revenue is going to be
reduced again this year so looking ahead into the future knowing that this parking revenue is going to be
reduced, this is basically forecasting that out and making sure that the allocation will be there for the 2022
Budget.
And | did have a conversation with the Mayor about this and he did indicate his support for it as well as the
cosponsors on the Legislation. | think it’s a prudent move on our part to ensure that regardless of what
happens this year, we will make sure that in the 2022 Budget there will be money for the Downtown
Improvement Committee. And then going forward, as also part of this, is the parking study which has been
mentioned before. Director Cummings is going to put into the parking study a plan to ensure that looking at the
barriers and how a reduced lane Main Street, a two-way Main Street if you will, one in each direction might
have on parking. So what that will do is enable us to look at do we need to adjust the parking revenue in
2022? And the way that we collect parking money, we can study the fact that is this the best way going
forward, if we are going to continue to reduce the lanes on Main Street, maybe even make that a permanent
thing someday, how are we going to recapture the money that the Downtown Improvement Committee gets
traditionally?
