Consideration and Approval of AZCares Grant Agreement:  Approve the agreement between the State of Arizona, acting through the Governor's Office and the City of Flagstaff for the AZCares Grant.

The City of Flagstaff is directly impacted by this pandemic and is in need of financial assistance.  The City provides essential services to our community such as public safety, water and wastewater services, trash and recycling, parks, building planning and permitting - without which, our community and local businesses could not operate.   The economic impact of the pandemic has caused a loss of millions for our local government.  The City is currently in the Significant stage of the Economic Recession Plan due to anticipated revenue losses.  The AZCares grant for $8,614,855 will help support the organization and maintain service levels due to anticipated revenue losses.  
 

The AZCares grant revenues will cover the salaries, wages and related fringe benefits for the following public safety programs within the City:   Fire Suppression/EMS Services, Police Patrol and Police Detectives.   This grant revenue will cover an estimated 10.39 bi-weekly pay periods for these three public safety programs.  Based on these projections, this budget is estimated to cover the payroll costs related to these three public safety programs starting March 8, 2020, through August 1, 2020.  These projections for these three public safety programs were based on an average bi-weekly payroll cost of $839,484, which is the average bi-weekly payroll cost for the March 8, 2020, through May 16, 2020, pay periods.

Budget Line Items:
Personnel - $4,812,955
Fringe Benefits - $3,801,900

None.

Regional Plan
Goal PF.3. Provide high-quality emergency response and public safety services including law enforcement, fire, medical, and ambulance transport service.
 

No, this is the first time this grant has been available and applied for. 

-  Approve the AZCares Grant Award
-  Not Approve the AZCares Grant Award

The CARES Act appropriated $2.82 billion dollars in Coronavirus Relief Funds to Arizona to assist the state, counties, and municipalities in paying for COVID-19 related expenses. Counties and cities with a population greater than 500,000, such as Maricopa, Pima, Phoenix, Tucson, and Mesa, were able to apply for their allocation directly from the Federal Treasury in March of this year and received an approximate total of $900 million dollars, equating to roughly $174 per resident.

At the end of May, Governor Ducey appropriated $441 million of the remaining $1.9 billion dollars to fund counties and municipalities that have a population of less than 500,000. The formula used to allocate these monies gave smaller government entities roughly $115 per resident, meaning that the City of Flagstaff will receive an allocation of $8.6 million dollars. By allowing the AZCares grant to cover public safety personnel costs, this will help offset the anticipated revenue losses to the organization.

The League of Arizona Cities and Towns along with the City's Lobbyist worked diligently to request support from the Governor's Office to include Arizona cities and towns as recipients of direct and flexible local budget support to municipalities across the country.  At the end of May, the Governor's Office established the AZCares Fund and the City of Flagstaff received a direct allocation from the U.S. Department of Treasury in the amount of $8,614,855.

These allowable costs were allocated for public health and safety regular salary and employee-related-expense (ERE) costs incurred between March 1, 2020 and December 30, 2020.

This CARES Act funding will support replacement of revenue loss due to the pandemic and recession.  The actual revenue loss impacts will not be known for several months and as such, staff recommends allowing additional time to analyze the loss in revenues.  Authorizing the AZCares Grant does not authorize increased expenditures as the FY 2020-21 budget has already been adopted.

Accepting the AZCares grant allows the City to continue to provide many services to the community.