HERMISTON — City budgets lay out a road map of projects for the upcoming fiscal year, but Hermiston City Manager Byron Smith told budget committee members Thursday that the city may have to make some adjustments as the fuller picture of COVID-19’s economic impacts becomes clear.

The budget committee approved the 2020-21 budget on Thursday, recommending it to the Hermiston City Council for final approval during the council’s June 8 meeting.

The city had originally planned to give all employees a 2.75% cost of living increase in July at the beginning of the fiscal year, but Smith told the committee that raise will now be held off until at least January. Smith said the city would see what effect the economic downturn has on property tax revenue, which makes up a majority of the city’s incoming funds.

“If we’re going to have negative impact on our revenues, we’ll know in November,” he said.

The cost of living increase would have cost the city approximately $275,000 for the entire year if implemented July 1.

Smith said the city has seen “slow and steady” growth in property values over the past nine years, and during the 2019-20 fiscal year passed the $1 billion mark in assessed value.

He said the city budgeted for lower than usual amounts of other revenue that have slowed or stopped during the pandemic, such as rentals of the Hermiston Community Center and Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center, revenue from the Hermiston Aquatic Center and transient room taxes on hotel stays.

The city plans to add two new positions, both to the police department. One, a new school resource officer, will focus solely on middle school students while school is in session, and will be funded 75% by the Hermiston School District. The other is a new records clerk. Smith said the police department has seen a large increase in requests for footage from body cameras, which takes time to go through the videos and make sure there are no HIPPA violations or other things that need redacted.

“We’re not only getting a lot more requests, but they’re taking a lot more time,” he said.

The city’s biggest capital improvement projects planned for the year come in the water and wastewater department. They include a $610,000 project to replace sewer lines at what Smith called the “Seventh Street bottleneck.” He said some smaller lines around Seventh Street would present a capacity problem if a new industrial project at the South Hermiston Industrial Park were to increase the amount of wastewater flowing from the south side of town to the recycled water treatment plant.

”Our recycled water superintendent gets worried during the fair every year because when EOTEC gets busy and a lot is going down the sewer line, he’s worried it’s not going to handle it, and we’re going to have overflows,” Smith said. “So as we continue to add more development up here, we need to have more capacity in that line.”

He said the city may be able to get some funding from the Economic Development Administration for the project through the CARES Act stimulus package recently passed by Congress.

Other projects include an improvement to a lift station, adding a backup generator to one of the city’s wells and replacing badly corroded water pipes along West Ridgeway Avenue.

The city’s capital improvement plan had dedicated the upcoming year as a revenue collection year for the streets fund, saving up revenue for larger projects down the road. Smith said that will allow the city to see what impact COVID-19 has on revenue from the state gas tax.

The city will spend some money continuing to refine designs for a reshaping of the intersection of Geer, Harper and River roads, and start design work for a project planned for 2024 to widen and improve North First Place.

The parks and recreation department is working to rebuild Funland Playground with about $700,000 from the insurance money the city received when the old playground burned down, and another $700,000 raised through private and corporate donations. The city department is also using Federal Emergency Management Administration dollars to repair Riverfront Park after it flooded in February.

After approving the recommended budget, the budget committee donned a second hat as the Hermiston Urban Renewal Agency budget committee. The urban renewal district collects a portion of property tax revenues generated within the district, which covers downtown.

They are starting the year with approximately $372,000 on hand, which by law must be spent on improvements to increase property values within the district.

City Planner Clint Spencer told the group that the urban renewal agency has the money to resurface and improve two of its municipal parking lots downtown.

“We can do a complete rebuild of at least one where we completely excavate it out and build it to a street standard, beautify it, relocate the curb cuts, rebuild the sideways and overall increase the efficiency, which will result in a net increase in 12 parking spots,” he said.

The urban renewal agency’s other project for the year will be adding wayfinding signage for destinations, such as the library. It will include signs to clearly point the public to the city’s six different municipal lots downtown. Spencer said people often don’t realize they are allowed to park in those lots, which downtown businesses have identified as an impediment to their sales.

“Everybody just sees the street parking and says, ‘Oh that’s full,’ but there are well over 200 spaces that are available just behind the buildings, so we’re trying to help direct people to those,” Spencer said.