Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
“Uncharted territory.”
That's the way that City Clerk and Treasurer Emily Anderson describes the city's budgetary prospects in the coming fiscal year, in terms of the influx of state and local revenues.
“We'll have to hope for the best and plan for the worst,” Anderson told the Monticello City Council on Tuesday, May 12.
She said that her recent attempts to examine the budget and estimate the next year's revenues and expenditures weren't going as usual. The reason, she said, was that the circumstances were anything but usual, a result of the current coronavirus pandemic.
“The state is still crunching the numbers,” Anderson said, referring to revenue estimates that the state typically puts out for cities and counties. “They haven't put out the projections yet.”
“We'll just have to tiptoe our way through the process,” she added. “But next year is going to be an added challenge.”
Anderson noted that the water and sewer budgets weren't taking as big a hit as the general fund, because people were staying at home and consequently consuming more water. Implying this was a silver lining to the situation. But not so for the other revenue sources, she said.
Anderson said she expected to have a clearer picture of the situation once the state posted its revenue figures for May and June and she was able to glean a little more information from the numbers. But the prospects didn’t look good, she warned, citing the general shutdown of businesses during the last few months because of the pandemic.
“As soon as I get the May and June figures from the state I'll get them to you,” Anderson told the council members.
Councilman Troy Avera, a member of the city's budget committee, agreed with Anderson's assessment, saying that the outlook presently indeed was dismal. He noted that 60 percent of the city's budget derived from monies generated by the sales and fuel taxes, revenue streams that were down because people hadn't been buying or traveling as much during the governor's stay-at-home order.
“By June we should see the April figures and it will give us heartburn,” Avera said. “Next year is going to be a rough year.”
He said the budget committee hadn't been able to meet because of the coronavirus outbreak and the social distancing measures put in place.
“We need to look at all unnecessary expenditures and put off nonessential purchases,” he said.
Councilman George Evans added a word of caution. Evans said he didn't want to see happen what happened with the county several years back when it had had to lay off upwards of 10 employees because of hard times.
“We need to look at the reserve so that we don't end up like the county, cutting jobs,” Evans said.
The council agreed to review the issue again in June.
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