Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 7
where you're looking to accept the money on the 14" which would be the first reading. | suspect it will have a second
reading and committee discussion. | wanted to be able to provide some sort of data at the subcommittee level, which
was one of the reasons why | want to really get it in the month of September because | could, you know, | could
foresee the conversation continuing on in October.
President Wilshire
Thank you. Alderwoman Kelly.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you. | have a couple of questions but | thank you for your presentation. | think it's important to kind of set the
framework for this. | perk up a little bit about the affordable housing. |, too, hear from everybody that affordable
housing, especially in our city is critical and | know that it aligned with a lot of the long-term planning and discussions
that we’ve been having and also aligns with some of the HUD discussions that we have in Human Affairs. So | think
that's an interesting opportunity to make a big impact like you were saying.
| do have a couple of questions but they might be a little too technical. | Know we talked about.
Tim Cummings Economic Development Director
That's why | have Cheryl.
Alderwoman Kelly
It might be a Sarah question, but | Know we talked about helping the Soup Kitchen with the shelter. Is that this money
or was that a separate bucket?
Tim Cummings Economic Development Director
That could be separate and so this is not project specific. So this is not by any means saying we've pre-identified
projects by any stretch.
Alderwoman Kelly
Okay. So that's outside of the scope. Can | ask one more follow up?
President Wilshire
Yeah, sure.
Alderwoman Kelly
The Mayor was talking about the school program and | was just interested in what that entailed. | guess | assumed
that if we were told we had to do universal that we were getting paid for that or the COVID funds that we were getting
was going to cover that. Do you know more about that? Through you to the Mayor.
Mayor Donchess
Thank you. Well we can get Dan Donovan from the School Department to answer it in detail but they apparently
believe that they cannot replace that revenue loss with money that they're receiving. Now we do get a benefit here
because they are returning to the city assuming that we make this revenue replacement $2.5 million of surplus, which
is part of the money that you've already seen or we've talked about. If we replace their revenue loss with a part of this
federal money, then the amount that will flow to surplus is $2.5 million. If we didn't, it would only be $1.3 million. So
we think in view of the escrows and the tax relief that we are providing with the surplus, that it's worth directing the
$1.2 into helping them to help them help us so too, so to speak.
One thing that | didn't mention was that one project that because Tim mentioned $1.7 million. We've wanted to do the
backup for the servers and we had that in the works, and then COVID came, and then the money got used for
something else. We really should do a $500,000 backup system. We have the room at the School Department but
this would be to prevent, you know, the extortion that we've seen so that if someone ever did hack the system and sort
