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2020/11/30 - Mayor's Column: City is Impacted by COVID

“An Open Door to O’Fallon”
A Weekly Note from Mayor Herb Roach
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COVID-19, and the state mitigation measures to combat COVID-19, have severely impacted the City of O’Fallon in many ways. As a result, the City has made steps to help reduce the negative impact of COVID-19 on city finances and our residents. Here is a brief list of the actions we have taken that have an impact on all of us and our businesses. The City has also taken some actions to help our citizens, local businesses, and their employees that will also have an impact.

  1. When it comes to the COVID impact, it has impacted us in many ways but the biggest is the impact on the lives of many of our Citizens. Then comes the loss of income to our families, businesses, and to the City from our hotels and the loss of income to our Parks Department.
     
  2. The City took some actions to try to help our local businesses that were heavily impacted by the State Regulations.  We prorated both the Gambling License Fees and Liquor License Fees to reflect the time when many businesses were fully shut down.
     
  3. We have had to make significant changes in wages in our Parks Department, Library, and others to adjust for the change in the Illinois Minimum Wage Law.  These changes will continue until minimum wage reaches $15/hour in 2025.  This will probably raise the personnel costs of the City by over $300,000 when fully implemented.
     
  4. We also saw the Veterans Property Tax Exemption on EAV values increase by over $6 Million. This brings the total amount of Veterans Residential Property Tax Exemptions to over $72 Million or about 10% of our Residential value.
     
  5. We have seen a sizeable increase in our State mandated pension costs. The increase was up over $100,000 from last year. We will not ignore this like some cities and just kick the can down the road.  We will maintain our appropriate rate of contribution and not pass it down to our children and their children.
     
  6. With the impact that COVID is having on many of our families and businesses, we have froze the water and sewer rates for the year (October 2020 to October 2021). This will result in an approximate combined savings to our users of $500,000 this year and in each future year. This is the second time that we have done this in the last three years. These two freezes result in over one million dollars in annual savings to our water and sewer customers.
     
  7. For over seven months, we deferred any penalties or fines on unpaid water and sewer bills to help families and businesses impacted by COVID.
     
  8. We have also made several reductions in costs by going out for bids and realignment of work.  One very significant savings was over $100,000 on our property and liability insurance coverage costs.  Another was the elimination of a full-time position with benefits for an Administrative Assistant for me, the City Administrator and Assistant City Administrator.
     
  9. We put in for and received a grant to help our local businesses. We will be administering the grant which will total $750,000.
     
  10. We have also been in contact with the County Health Department in planning for a facility and equipment that can be used here in O’Fallon to administer the COVID-19 virus vaccines as soon as one is available.
     
  11. At this time, we have over half a dozen businesses that have closed. Some have temporarily closed due to the restrictions and trying to be good neighbors and some have closed permanently due to the restrictions.

The bottom line is that after all of this, our staff, in addition to their normal duties have been taking on several new assignments to help our citizens and businesses through these challenging times and we will continue to maintain a balanced budget.  Now, after a lot of calculations and reductions to budget numbers, we are hoping to keep our tax rate where it is near the 2010 tax rate.  The actual dollar change in the real-estate taxes in the budget will be about $90,000 (around 0.1% of the City annual budget).  We are required to approve our tax levy prior to January 1st, even though we do not receive our final Assessed Property Values and exemptions until about April of 2021.

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Please make sure that as a Citizen or a Business that is open, that you take proper precautions to protect yourself and others. Your actions could impact other’s lives.

As residents of O’Fallon, you should always be able to reach out to your elected officials and ask questions about what is happening in O’Fallon. Having open communications is important to me and something I care very deeply about. Thank you for reading, and please remember, my door is always open (virtually, at least)!