Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 8
of shut it down, we would be able to repopulate the software with the data that we have on file. So | think we should
do that. To me, that is such a necessity that we should, you know, set that set that $500,000 aside before we even
think about whether other smaller projects that we get from the directors would be worth doing.
President Wilshire
All set?
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you.
Alderman Dowd
Yes, the first thing you had the first bullet was $13 million towards, | believe, offsetting cost for the budget year. The
only issue | have with that and maybe a John Griffin question is this is one-time funding. If you spend say $13 million
to offset the budget to reduce the budget costs, how do you make that difference up in year two? You start with a $13
million hole in revenue and that's a huge issue and always been a huge issue. When we tried to apply too much
money to reduce the tax rate in one year, it could very seriously impact the tax rate in the succeeding year. So it's a
balance and that's something that John Griffin can explain in detail.
Mayor Donchess
Well just yes definitely that's correct. | mean if — and that’s a big if, if we adopted that approach, you would make this
revenue replacement over a period of four or five years because we have until 2026 to spend the money. So you
would even things out over a period of three, four, or five years rather than, you know, falling into the trap that you just
mentioned.
Alderman Dowd
You know there’s more to clarify that for the general public that we can’t just take $13 million and apply it to next
year's tax rate and, you know, have this really artificially low tax rate for one year and then bingo the next year you get
hammered.
Mayor Donchess
And we cannot actually use it for tax relief but what we can use it for is revenue replacement. So to the extent that we
see and can document loss of revenue along with a certain 4.1 percent increase per year that we could replace, |
mean you could find revenue that we had lost to use up the money over a period of years but we couldn't just say
we're going to use this to cut the taxes. We would need to, you know, direct it into a sort of a tactical revenue
replacement approach.
President Wilshire
All set Alderman Dowd?
Alderman Dowd
All set.
Tim Cummings Economic Development Director
If | may Madam President?
President Wilshire
Director Cummings.
Tim Cummings Economic Development Director
The thought would be also to massage it in as the Mayor was saying over time because we know that there's the
