TAMPA - Two weeks ago, at a public hearing on the city's proposed $674-million budget, the City Council asked its staff to free up $1-million for stormwater projects in South Tampa and fire rescue equipment in New Tampa.
The hurricane season - and $10-million or more in cleanup costs - have blown that plan away.
Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio came back Thursday night saying the stormwater projects and a new ambulance would have to wait until the 2006 budget.
Instead, she presented a plan to cut $1.5-million from departmental coffers to fatten a reserve fund needed to pay for hurricane cleanup and repairs.
"When I first came before you to present this budget, it was Aug. 12," she said before Thursday's hearing. She left that meeting and went right to a planning session to prepare for the possible arrival of Hurricane Charley.
"From the time I presented the budget to you to this day the state of Florida has been hit by four hurricanes," she said. "These are uncommon times."
The city has already spent millions on employee overtime pay, including the solid waste department staff, which has been working seven days a week.
Preliminary estimates put the cost of hurricane-related cleanup at $10-million to $12-million, said Bonnie Wise, the city's finance director. The city must shoulder 12.5 percent of that, with the state picking up another 12.5 percent and the Federal Emergency Management Agency taking on 75 percent of eligible expenses.
For the past few days, Iorio said, department heads have been shaving items from their budgets to put an additional $1.5-million into the reserve fund, for which the city budget had earmarked $2.5-million. The additional money will help pay costs racked up during the 2004 storm season and guarantee there will be money if next year's season is equally active, Iorio said.
The budget-slicing exercises may not be over yet, Wise said, because the cost of hurricane cleanup still isn't final. Plus, projected revenues might change in the face of sales, gas and hotel taxes lost during the string of storms.
"We may in fact be back here again for further revisions to departmental budgets," she said.
Iorio said, however, that the storm season underscored the need for some departments to reshuffle priorities.
She pledged some relief this year to residents of Paxton Avenue, a street south of Gandy Boulevard near MacDill Avenue where six homes experienced severe flooding; and people on Coachman and Alline avenues near Bayshore where sewer water fills the streets during hard rains.
Departmental cuts include $200,000 from the fire department; $375,000 from the police department; $350,000 from parks and recreation; and $300,000 from Public Works.
"I don't think there are any of us that are happy about the situation we found ourselves in tonight," said council member Shawn Harrison, who extracted a commitment from Wise to have an ambulance and six fire rescue workers in place in New Tampa early rather than later in the 2006 fiscal year.
The City Council voted 7-0 in favor of the departmental cuts and the proposed budget, which sets the city property tax millage rate at 6.539 mills, the same as last year. One mill is the equivalent of $1 for each $1,000 of assessed value on nonexempt property. The city's millage rate for 2005 did not change from the previous year.
"This has been a pretty depressing meeting because we wish we had more resources," said council member Linda Saul-Sena. However, she praised Iorio and her staff for streamlining administrative processes and said she hoped the city would able to do more with less.
"I look forward to this being a strong, effective year for the city," she said.
