PEORIA, Ill. — Peoria City Council was delivered some good news Tuesday night regarding the 2020-2021 budget, which continues to be restructured.
“We’ve been fortunate over the last couple months some additional revenue coming in,” said City Manager Patrick Urich.
“When we originally looked at the numbers, we saw our sales tax numbers, and we were anticipating they would be down possibly as much on the local side as 40%. We’re now looking at it closer to 27%.”
Similarly, Urich said original projections showed state sales tax down around 30%, but more recent projections have been showing a number closer to 14%.
It wasn’t all good news, though, as hotel revenue was still anticipated to be around 43% down and restaurant taxes, 28% down.
“The result of this is, with these additional stronger revenue projections, we’re not anticipating having to borrow $20 million now. It would be looking at a working cash bond of only $15 million,” he said.
Urich said recent projections showed around a $360 million revenue loss as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It may be higher, as we don’t have very good data to determine how much we’re actually seeing in revenue loss on the income tax side,” he warned.
Council took no formal action regarding budget restructuring, other than to receive and file Urich’s update.
Urich estimated council wouldn’t vote until August, and it partially depended on the U.S. Senate’s vote on a fifth stimulus bill that would allocate money to states, which has passed through the House.
Budgetary talks have been ongoing since the start of the pandemic.
