The health and safety of our community, visitors, and employees is a priority for the City of Osage Beach and we continue to respond to the rapidly changing COVID-19 pandemic. The City is working through these changes and will be phasing in contact with the public.
- City facilities are open to the public and public meetings have resumed with restrictions related to social distancing and screening. Employees continue to be screened upon arriving for work.
- Park facilities are open and many activities and sports programs have resumed, with restrictions. The status of three city events is yet to be determined, which are National Night Out, 20th Annual Fall Festival, and the Citywide Rummage Sale.
We continue to ask our community, visitors, and employees to be diligent and take precautions as recommended or instructed to do.
We appreciate your patience as we manage this situation and know we are dedicated to being good stewards of our community and will continue to operate efficiently to deliver superior municipal services to our citizens and visitors.
COVID-19 Impacts on the FY2020 Budget:
As presented to the Mayor and Board of Aldermen at the May 7th Board of Aldermen meeting, an operational spending plan was outlined based on an estimated 15% decrease for FY2020 revenues, all sources. $2 million in expenditure cuts were made and $2.2 million in reserves were targeted to be used to meet the initial revenue decline estimates of $4.2 million (15% overall estimated decline).
As we have moved through the past month, operational spending is being adjusted accordingly to reflect changes in estimated revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic environment and our economy. The latest sales tax collection, other market indicators, as well as the overall pandemic situation, are reassuring in meeting our effort to be proactive to our financial environment. We are not ‘out of the woods’, but these indicators are leading towards less impact as originally planned for.
The City’s top three overall revenue sources consist of Sales Tax, Service Fees, and Grants and other Reimbursements. Nearly two months ago I estimated overall City revenue (all sources) to decline aggregately as much as 15% due to COVID-19; as this is a fluid process and a lot has changed, factors led me to update that estimate closer to 8%-9% of decline due to COVID-19. This equates to an estimate of $2.4 million in revenue decline city-wide.
Operational response to the adjusted estimates will include systematically addressing the furloughed and reduced hours of employees, assessing the hiring freezes that are in place, assessing many of the O&M expenditure and capital expenditure cuts. This will be done methodically with the appropriate departments, timely and accordingly to ensure we respond in the most conservative fashion to our changing financial situation.
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