City Administrator: FY21 budget balanced amid pandemic; FY22 shows smaller gap but rising costs remain

City Administrator Johnson on July 19 told the City Commission that the city adopted a legally balanced fiscal year 2021 general fund budget while managing ‘‘an unprecedented budget challenge’’ caused by the COVID-19 recession and related market changes. Johnson said the adopted FY21 budget began with a structural change: departments reduced their budgets to remove a built-in $4,200,000 vacancy allowance so the city would not start the year artificially overstated. Even so, she said, the city faced a roughly $7.1 million loss in other general-fund revenue streams during FY21 and an operating-expenditure increase of about $9.9 million, creating an operating gap of about $7.9–8.0 million that the city closed with a mix of cuts and shifts. The measures Johnson listed included significant reductions in material and operating services (travel, training, professional services and small capital outlay), elimination of a $1 million…