04.07.20 Regular Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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City Council Meeting Minutes April 7, 2020 Jay Stiles: "The current health crisis is devastating by itself but it has also engendered a financial crisis that will seriously damage our communities. It is important that we deal with these circumstances vigorously and in consideration of the monetary impact to us all. San Marcos gets a large portion of its revenues from Sales Tax Rebates, Hotel Occupancy Taxes and Property Taxes. Sales tax inflows will be very significantly reduced with the Outlet Malls and many other businesses closed or seriously curtailed. This and a large reduction in Hotel Occupancy tax inflows will make a large shortfall of revenue a certainty. Does our city have contingency plans to deal with this? And if not is the City now preparing contingency plans based on our current conditions, and further plans that can be triggered if the crisis deepens more? It would be comforting to hear what plans there are for cutting expenses, even if it means a reduction of services, delaying projects or even cancelling them. The city made a difficult but good decision to put on hold a salary increase for city workers, but I am dismayed that the city has announced it will go to the credit markets to borrow more than 50 million dollars if the Council votes to move forward at a meeting scheduled for June 5th. The debt proposal announcement included: "The City presently proposes to provide for the payment of the certificates of obligation by the levy of ad valorem taxes, within the limits prescribed by law ... The following information is required ... to be provided by the City (excludes $215,180,000 in principal amount of outstanding debt obligations that the City has designated as self-supporting and which the City reasonably expects to pay from revenues sources other than ad valorem taxes; provided, however, that in the event that such self-supporting revenue sources are insufficient to pay debt service, the City is obligated to levy ad valorem taxes to pay such debt obligations. We are facing drastically reduced revenue which could potentially affect our ability to service our debt. This in turn may require raising our ad valorem (property) taxes. And we are now aiming to add to our debt ... again based on raising our property taxes to pay for it! But our property taxes are already very high and valuations are likely to fall due to this crisis. Any additional debt is ill advised at this time and needs to be carefully scrutinized with the aim to hold the total amount to a bare minimum. San Marcos must "live within its means". Thank you." Lisa Marie Coppoletta: "Your agenda should be only focusing on a global pandemic. Since you placed cite and release on the agenda, here goes. For several months cite and release has been a hot topic with racial discrimination as the focal point. And, I've been up here talking about the sidewalk and abuse of power. Cite and release will not be effective unless we take an examination of Bert, who often thinks City of San Marcos Page 9