Perot Predicts $250,000 Deficit in Revenue for 2019-2020

By V. Hugh Lewis II, publisher

During the Jefferson City Council Budget Workshop Tuesday evening, Mayor Pro Tem Victor Perot indicated a possible $250,000 shortfall in revenue by the end of the 2019-2020 fiscal year. The fiscal year ends September 30.

“Our revenue, compared to where it was last year, we’re a little over 400,000 short,” so we’re going to ask everyone to cut their budget by 10% and hoping we can do so. We’ll have a little more information when we close this month out. Sales Tax is up a little over 20k through last month. We still have 3 months after this month for the income to come i to see where we are, but we’re going to have to work based on we’re going to have a deficit of at least 250,000 of revenue not collected in this budget year compared to prior years.”

Based on the financial reported on June 30, the City had receive $1.5 Million of the budget $2 Million in the Administrative Budget. Expenses as of June 30 were at $846,814. Last year at this time, the City had received $1.77 Million of the $1.98 Million budgeted.

Property Tax collections are at 97% of budgeted with $789,358 collected. Sales Tax, however has only collected $474,242 of the $800,000 budgeted. Most Revenue sources are around 50% of what was budgeted per the June 30 reports.

Perot has asked Council members and Department Heads to try and cut their budget’s by 10% for next year.

“We’re not going to be doing a street program next year, we know that,” said Perot.

“We also had a large additional cost in elections this year because we scheduled for a May election and had already pre-paid a bunch of monies for ballots and that kind of stuff,” said Perot. “Then we found out we couldn’t have it. Now the county is going to put that election on for us (in November), so we’re actually close to double paying for what we’d pay for this one election.

Currently, the City has paid $1,380.75 of the $9,000 budgeted for elections, per the June 30 reports.

“So I beg of y’all to do your studying and try to figure out where we can cut,” said Perot. “It doesn’t need to be a one man job it needs to be everybody on this board having those considerations.”

“This will be the hardest year the City has ever seen,” Perot continued. “We need to do a good job for our community and cut back where we can. You know, its not that we’re broke, we have money in the bank but we don’t need to dip into that. We’re working to find out how much money we have in consolidated cash versus budgeted. We have $675,000 in TexPool right now. I’m hoping with consolidated cash vs budget, we have close to another million dollars in the bank that’s not earmarked. I’m not sure what it is, but that’s my hope.

“Wayne Smith has built these affordable housing in town, and my concern for them is the we’re telling them that we don’t have the money to put asphalt down (on the road to them),” said Ward 2 Councilman Tyrani Braddock. “We need to take care of that right now and make that investment.”

“Right now we need to not spend as much money as we can out of the current budget,” said Perot. “But I’ve talked to Wayne several times and he actually has a better road than a lot of people in town. Can we put him on the list, absolutely. It’s kind of a catch-22 as a lot of our streets are going to hell in a hand basket, but it’s one place we can hold back the spending. Should we do that, probably not. If we can come up with the money, we’ll come up with the money, but we can’t have any projects in this next upcoming budget unless we receive a large injection of money.”

Council will meet again next Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. The Herald will be live for that meeting.

The June 30, 2020, Budget reports begin on Page 12 of the document below.

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