Discuss the merits of waiting until 2021 to present voters with a public safety levy or specifically what portions of the public safety levy strategy the Council want to place on the 2020 ballot. 

 Over the past two years, the City Council identified improving the safety of Billings as our highest priority.  As a result, we spent the that time working towards a public safety mill levy election for late 2020.  At the same time we have worked to increase investments in public safety, we have a structural imbalance in the City’s General (GF).  Excluding capital, the City is spending close to five million dollars annually more than we generate in revenue for the General and Public Safety Funds.
Strategies to reduce crime and reduce the fire department’s response times to emergency calls have been presented along with the resources needed to implement each strategy.  Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has completely dominated the City’s attention since early March and has resulted in a catastrophic economic downturn in the global economy.  No one can predict with certainty, how long the global pandemic will last and what its impact will be to our local economy.  Unfortunately, the City’s public safety and financial problems will not get better in the short term.  However, the economic situation calls into question any ballot election in 2020. 
May 4, 2020 the City Administrator and Finance Director presented their proposed fiscal year 2021 (FY21) budget.  The proposed budget is, in part based on a recommendation to wait until 2021 to ask voters to approve a public safety levy.  This decision combined with a decision to move all parks, recreation, cemetery and public lands budgets from the City’s GF and into Park District One (PD1) does not resolve the City’s GF structural imbalance.  However, this decision regarding PD1 prevents the GF budget from dropping reserves below the recommended minimum in the proposed FY21 budget.  The alternative to shifting costs to PD1 is to either ask voters to approve a mill levy in 2020 or to cut approximately $4,000,000 from the proposed FY21 GF budget.
 
To place the potential cuts into context the adopted FY20 and proposed FY21 City’s GF and PSF budgets are as follows:

Department	FY20 Adopted Budget		FY21 Proposal Budget
Mayor and Council	261,042	0.4%	264,919	0.5%
City Administrator	906,846	1.4%	1,930,702	3.3%
Municipal Court	1,493,143	2.4%	1,479,095	2.5%
City Attorney	1,891,799	3.0%	2,092,530	3.6%
Human Resources	826,205	1.3%	825,565	1.4%
Finance	1,527,061	2.4%	1,552,163	2.7%
Code Enforcement	564,362	0.9%	575,602	1.0%
Parks and Recreation	5,617,665	8.9%	-	0.0%
Police Department	27,017,423	42.9%	26,195,458	44.9%
Fire Department	20,973,126	33.3%	21,561,438	36.9%
Non-Departmental	1,864,686	3.0%	1,895,897	3.2%
Total General & Public Safety Fund	62,943,358		58,373,369

Very little capital is included in the GF & PSF therefore most cuts would need to come from personnel.  In simplistic terms, $2,000,000 in budget cuts is equal to 25 full time GF positions.   
If the council decides to move forward with a ballot measure in 2020, June 8^th is the latest date the city can adopt a ballot measure increasing revenues for public safety for FY21.  With only four weeks left to this deadline, clear direction must be given during this work session.



 

The City Council could decide to:
1.) move forward with the 2020 public safety levy as presented before the COVID19 pandemic (see attached information from March 2020 Council Work Session),
2.) Move forward with a PSML that only deals with the structural imbalance,
3.) Move forward with a PSML that only replaces the 2004 $8.2 million revenue capped levy, or
4.) Any other alternative the Council decides.

The proposed FY21 budget anticipates using $3,000,000 in GF reserves to balance the GF.  The adopted 2020 budget used over $5 million dollars in reserves to balance the GF.  At the time the budget was adopted the Council was working diligently to take a public safety mill levy voters in 2020 fixing our structural imbalance and increasing investments in public safety to accomplish their #1 priority.  In 2014 the public turned down a significant public safety levy by less than 1,000 votes.  This also greatly limits the investments we had been planning to reduce crime and lower fire department response times.
 
As discussed above, an alternative to relying completely on reserves, or significantly cutting the City’s public safety investments is to shift the remaining parks, recreation, cemetery and public lands budgets out of the general fund and over to Park District 1.  This decision will increase the PD1 assessment by ~$60 per year for the typical homeowner and make available $4.1 million to help pay for public safety services.  This does not solve the City’s structural imbalance long term but would allow the public safety levy to be postponed until 2021 (2022 fiscal year).