There’s nothing scheduled yet, but the Kyle City Council will soon be calling a workshop in order to gauge how the city’s finances are holding up during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Near the end of the council’s marathon (nearly seven hours) meeting April 7, members and Mayor Travis Mitchell began discussing the situation to see, as he said, what’s coming in and what’s not.
It is clear already the city has seen a huge loss in sales tax allocations sent monthly from the State Comptroller’s Office. The city of Kyle saw a February allocation that was 17.48 percent larger than the amount they were rebated in February 2019. Kyle’s April rebate was four percent smaller than that received a year ago.
While that’s an unavoidable consequence of bars, restaurants, offices and “non essential” retail outlets being ordered to close to help prevent the spread of the virus, the city has discretion in what pending projects to pursue and which to postpone until the economy starts to rebound.
“It’s difficult to state what projects we are focusing on at this point,” Mitchell told the Hays Free Press on Saturday. “Our intention is to scrub through the analysis provided by staff and reprioritize resources based on a dramatically changed list of council priorities.”
Mitchell said the first part of that process will be taking a hard look at projected revenue and tweaking the economic forecast accordingly.
“I expect a few funded capital projects and planned expenses will be defunded,” he said. “I also expect we will start working on new initiatives aimed at meeting the needs of the community.”
