The City-funded support for local businesses, residents and charities is coming into focus as the DJ reports today
The Burlingame City Council agreed to build a $500,000 grant program for local businesses, while setting aside $250,000 to purchase gift cards for struggling families and donating another $250,000 to service providers. The program is to be administered by the San Mateo County Economic Development Association, or SAMCEDA, which is also operating a similar program through the county.
Noting the city’s contribution capacity is limited, Councilman Michael Brownrigg said the Burlingame Back in Business program would likely serve about 50 companies fitting a limited criteria with grants capped at about $10,000.
Officials also agreed to purchase about 1,000 gift cards from Visa or Mastercard worth $250 which would be distributed to families in Burlingame, with hopes the cards would be redeemed at local businesses. Councilmembers had first discussed attempting to restrict spending to a specific zip code, but ultimately determined allowing flexibility for families who need assistance would be more valuable. Those eligible for the program will be contacted by the city’s utility provider, which maintains a list of those who qualify for financial aid.
We are in the fourth quarter of the city's fiscal year which ends on June 30th. Using last year's financial report as a rosy baseline, page 34 shows the $84.5M of revenue had major components of property taxes (25.7%), sales and use taxes (21.1%) and the biggie that is also the most at risk, hotel tax (34.8%). When Michael Brownrigg says that the city's contribution capacity is "limited", he ain't kidding. We could easily see the hotel tax get cut in half for the year--which would be a $15M hit to the budget.
Even at the end of June when the next report arrives, we won't really see the complete picture since the pain arrived at the end of the third quarter. Another DJ piece on the San Mateo budget shortfall lays out the timing issue
“There’s a challenge we have on sales tax in that the data we get is essentially six months in arrears. The most recent sales tax data we have is for the third quarter of 2019,” said Finance Director Richard Lee. “We won’t see the true impact of COVID-19 for another six months. … It’s a similar concept for [hotel] tax.”
San Mateo's predicting a $7M "structural imbalance" next year which seems small to me. It's total projected budget is $251M but only 14.3% in sales and hotel tax, so we shall see.
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