With the novel coronavirus continuing to spread, the City of Baytown has made significant adjustments to its budget and services.
According to the Baytown Sun, the Baytown Finance Committee met April 3 to discuss COVID-19 and the subsequent impact being felt by the city both in this year’s budget as well as the coming year’s financial planning.
Nick Woolery, assistant city manager, said that over the past several years, the council and staff have worked tirelessly to prepare the city for a potential crisis and enhance economic growth while giving residents the lowest property tax rates possible.
“In our recent annual audit report, it was announced that we finished the fiscal year 2019 with 125 days of operating expenditures in reserves,” Woolery said. “What that allows us to do in our current situation is make modest adjustments to expenditures, but not reduce critical services that our residents expect us to provide.”
The city is anticipating that the COVID-19 impact will be great in regards to sales tax numbers for several months, if not through the upcoming fiscal year, though the exact impact will not likely be known for some time. The current projections — which are still early — show an overall loss of $2 million of sales tax to the general fund for the 2020 fiscal year.
“City staff has worked to reduce expenditures through the rest of this fiscal year totaling $2 million to ensure the loss of sales tax revenue does not negatively impact our budget,” Woolery said. “As I mentioned before, these reductions will not have an impact on the services our residents receive from the city.”
There are no capital projects underway that must be paused, though it is possible that some upcoming projects might be delayed for several months to give the city enough time to calculate the damages of the virus. One such project is the new animal shelter, which Woolery said will be be completed this year. Other projects such as a park for GInger Creek and a renovation of Citizen Bank might be postponed.
Woolery did clear up some confusion surrounding the Hotel Occupancy Fund.
“The first six months of this fiscal year came in well above budget, which has given us a nice cushion heading into this crisis,” Woolery said. “We do anticipate drastic reductions in HOF revenue during April and May, and fairly significant reductions for the remaining four months. Because the year started strong, we are projecting a revenue loss of roughly $200,000 for the fiscal year 2020. We will make expenditure cuts to ensure we have a balanced budget in HOF this fiscal year.”
Alerts Sign-up