2021-17 Ordinance Amending City Code Chapter 07 - Officers and Employees Generally

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April 1, 2021 TO: Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe & Decatur City Council Members FROM: Scot Wrighton, City Manager RE: Ordinance Amending City Code- Chapter 7-Officers and Employees Generally The recommended ordinance makes the city manager responsible for changing and updating employee job titles as needed, rather than requiring changes to a council ordinance every time a position title is changed. The context for why this matter comes to the City Council at this time follows. The city's financial condition will be discussed in greater detail at the April study session; but the city's long-term financial stability remains tenuous. Not only is the city dealing with the economic effects of the pandemic, but there are new perils on the horizon: 1) to financially bail out the State of Illinois,the Governor has proposed cutting by 10%its distributions to municipalities from the Local Government Distributive Fund (LGDF) which supplies local governments' statutory allotment from income tax revenues; 2) any reduction in the city's certified census count later this year will reduce LGDF even further,along with State Use Taxes, motor fuel taxes and all other revenues based on per capita calculations; 3) the proliferation of online sports betting services will likely cut into the city's video gaming revenues; 4) revenue from taxes on telecommunications services continues to decline as more customers transition to wireless platforms; 5) while federal relief funding is appreciated, it provides only partial and one-time revenue replacement, and the bulk of federal funds are narrowly restricted to specific expenditure categories related to direct COVID costs and infrastructure; and 6) many other revenue categories,though not in decline, have levelled-off to an extent that they cannot supply new revenue every year to keep pace with inflation and meet new demands from labor unions. The additional aggregate financial impact from these revenue changes could easily exceed $2 million annually for Decatur beginning in 2022. At the same time, the city is experiencing rapid increases in fire and police pension payment obligations that gobble up most of the annual property tax levy. This tenuous revenue picture principally hits the General Fund, from which police, fire and most other employees are paid. This is why the City Council has pro-actively committed to continuing fiscal austerity measures into the 2021 budget, and to regularly revisiting the budget to make more changes as required. Four months into the 2020 pandemic,city staff estimated the likely amount of the General Fund's revenue shortfalls and requested that the City Council authorize taking up to $2 million from its restricted reserves to balance the 2020 budget. As it turned out, staff's revenue reduction predictions were fairly accurate; but the amount required from restricted reserves turned out to be substantially less than authorized because staff reduced expenditures in all departments by delaying capital purchases and selectively reducing employee compensation costs by leaving some positions unfilled when they were vacated through natural attrition.As vacancies occurred,