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NORFOLK — With very little detail available, several Norfolk City Council members expressed serious concerns about the task of passing a budget in the face of the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout.
“I have no clue what I’m voting on,” Councilman Tommy Smigiel said via video call during a work session discussion Tuesday night. “We have no clue at all what the revenue is going to look like with all this. It’s such a big unknown."
Smigiel noted that it wasn’t meant to be a dig at City Manager Chip Filer or city budget staff, saying they’re dealing with just as many unknowns as the rest of the world.
But Filer’s initial budget pitch on April 21 included next to no specifics about tens of millions in cost reductions he’s proposed for the upcoming fiscal year. Two weeks before the council is set to vote on the budget, those gaps in information still hadn’t been filled.
Before the coronavirus shut down a huge swath of the economy, Norfolk officials had assembled a budget they thought would include surplus money at the end of the current fiscal year and higher revenues during the next. Now, they’ve projected $55 million in lost revenue between the last quarter of the current budget and next year due to the coronavirus chaos.
“We spent eight or nine months building a budget that was dead on arrival two weeks before we were supposed to present," city budget director Greg Patrick told the council.
Filer has said his idea is to fully fund core services such as police, fire/rescue, trash pickup and others for the fiscal year starting July 1, but majorly pare back operations elsewhere to start the fiscal year. His proposal would hack $40 million out of next year’s operational funds via an array of cuts, including continuing the closures of, or only partially reopening, city facilities like libraries and recreation centers, which have been shuttered since the onset of the pandemic.
More than 600 staffers, many from those shuttered departments, have been furloughed for now, with those furloughs potentially extended into next year’s budget.
Filer has listed more than a dozen potential cost-saving cuts, but has described them in broad buckets. When council members pressed for details about the cuts Tuesday, city staff said they won’t have specifics on how much is saved by each cut until the middle of next week.
Similarly, Filer told the city council that he expected to cut the city’s capital spending for the next year from an originally projected $122 million to around $50 million — in part by putting off a planned $50 million Chrysler Hall renovation — but said they couldn’t say exactly what was going to be put off until later this week.
Ultimately, council members seemed resigned to having to pass a spending plan with limited information.
“We’re all just going to have to deal with some very uncomfortable things and very uncomfortable issues in terms of budget cuts,” Councilwoman Angelia Williams Graves said.
The city will host a public hearing on the budget Wednesday night, despite the scant information available to taxpayers about how the city will actually spend its money next year.
The council’s budget discussions will continue next week and an approval vote is scheduled for May 19.
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Smigiel urged the council to push ahead with a vote sooner rather than later, saying delays would push back the school district’s budget adoption, which in turn would leave them fighting to find or keep teachers weeks after other neighboring school districts had started hiring for next year.
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Want to watch?
Norfolk Budget Public Hearing — 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 6, 2020
If you just want to watch or listen:
- NorfolkTV-48 for Norfolk COX subscribers
- Livestream on the city’s website: https://www.norfolk.gov/1119/City-Council-Meeting-Videos-Podcasts
- WebEx video: https://convoice.webex.com472714474@convoice.webex.com — Meeting Number 472 714 474 Password: PHBudgetFY2021#
- WebEx Phone: 1-415-655-0002 — Access Code: 472 714 474# Password: PHBudgetFY2021#
To comment live
By phone: email ccouncil@norfolk.gov or call 757-664-4253 and provide name, budget subject and phone number ahead of the meeting. A member of the Clerk’s staff will call when Council is ready for your comment. The speaker will have up to three minutes to address Council by phone.
By videoconference: either email ccouncil@norfolk.gov or call 757-664-4253 and provide name, budget subject and phone number, prior to the meeting. Then join the WebEx video meeting or phone meeting listed above and a city staffer will unmute you when it’s your chance to speak.
Note: Comments will be limited to three minutes and limited to discussion on the proposed budget.
To comment by email:
Send your name, budget item and comment to ccouncil@norfolk.gov ahead of the meeting. The Clerk will note your email and budget subject for the formal record.