Central Coast cities face revenue losses as the state shelters in place
CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, Calif. (KION) In addition to health impacts, cities across the Central Coast are getting hit hard financially by the coronavirus pandemic and shelter-in-place orders. With businesses closed down and less tourists visiting popular destinations, less revenue is coming into local governments.
Ocean Avenue was not as bustling as it might be on a warm spring day Monday afternoon because of the stay at home order. With the pandemic still a rapidly evolving situation, local leaders are waiting to make cuts before knowing the full economic impacts.
The avenue, one of Carmel-By-The-Sea’s most popular tourist destinations now has closed store fronts, open parking spaces and little foot traffic. The coronavirus and stay-at-home orders have put a damper on tourism, which is a huge industry for the city and Monterey Peninsula.
“We have two markets, one pharmacy and one gas station. The rest of it is
retail and restaurant. It’s a pretty devastation impact, but we don’t know
the magnitude of it yet,” Carmel-By-The-Sea Mayor Dave Potter said.
The city is taking a hard look at ways to balance but the budget with less
sales tax and hotel tax revenues likely to come in. But how they’ll do that, still remains to be seen.
Layoffs may be considered in the future if necessary, but Mayor Potter
says they’re not planning to do so now.
“At some point we may have to discuss that, but again, until we know what
the actual economic impacts of the virus have been, we’re going to wait and make our decisions based off of data and not suppositions or speculations,” Potter said.
Over in Salinas, 300 city employees have been sent home, but are still
getting paid, similarly to Santa Cruz. Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter told KION they’ll continue to run public safety and essential services, like police and fire departments and public works.
Some services, like libraries, have been shut down to follow heath
guidelines. And city hall is closed.
But with the coronavirus still a very fluid situation, it’s hard to tell the
severity of the financial impacts.
“We won’t know the financial impact until probably July," Gunter said. "Then we’re going to have to take a hard look at, do we have to cut some of those services?”
Gunter hopes state leaders will reimburse some of their staffing expenses.
And King City’s mayor is looking to the governor for help.
“Such as doubling the tax allocation for cities and counties for the months
of February, March and April,” Mayor Mike LeBarre said.
If the situation gets worse, leaders may have to cut some services
they offer to the public, but many cities KION spoke with are trying to avoid layoffs.
