Yuma ups funds for utilities assistance and fixing roads
City council also approves employee pay adjustments
With revenues doing better than expected, Yuma is in a position to help more people pay their utility bills, fix more roads and give employees promised raises.
The City Council on Wednesday voted to add more funding to several city programs, including $500,000 to Yuma Cares, the city’s utilities assistance program, $600,000 for pavement preservation, and $300,000 to the next phase of the employee pay adjustment.
The extra money will be covered through existing, unencumbered funds in the general and water/wastewater funds. No budget adjustment is needed to support these program enhancements, a staff report stated.
In the current fiscal year, the city had already allocated $75,000 to the Yuma Cares utilities assistance program, which is administered through the Western Arizona Council of Governments. The requested $500,000 in additional funding will allow the city to help more residents with their utility bill “during this unprecedented time,” a staff report noted.
The city currently has 1,438 accounts totaling about $680,000 in delinquent bills for water, sewer and trash services. The average delinquent account is about $475.
The delinquency amount was actually higher through the summer, but it has started to decline, City Administrator Phil Rodriguez said.
Councilman Gary Knight noted that the delinquencies probably have to do with COVID-19 and related loss of jobs. Rodriguez explained that once the COVID-19 pandemic hit the community, the city stopped all water shutoffs and tried to work out payment plans with residents who asked for help.
The no-shutoff policy will continue through the holidays, and the city will reinitiate water shutoffs in January.
Knight urged residents who are behind in their city services bill to seek help through WACOG. “The timing is perfect. We need to get this done before the holidays so that by the first of the year as many as possible can be caught up,” he said.
The additional $600,000 brings pavement preservation funding to 135% more than that of the previous fiscal year 2020, “a clear commitment to further address one of the city’s greatest needs,” a staff report stated.
“The Public Works department has been hard at work,” the report added, noting the current funding this fiscal year is more than double of the last fiscal year. With the additional funding, staff noted, the department can now improve an additional 12 miles of residential roadways in the Cibola Heights and Sierra Sunset subdivisions. When completed, the roadways will be pothole free for five years.
Councilwoman Ema Lea Shoop pointed out that there is a lot of “chatter” and “enthusiasm” in the community with more dollars available to fix the streets. “A lot of people are telling me, thank you, thank you, and we’re all watching to see where the street improvements will be,” she said.
Knight also said he was happy the city can now give employees their promised Labor Market Study pay raises. “It was really disappointing. We worked so hard before COVID to get the LMS increases for our employees and then to have to suspend those for what looked like a sixmonth period, now it looks like only just four,” he said.
The first half of a Labor Market Study adjustment and a new step plan for public safety personnel were implemented on July 1, 2019. The second half of these employee market adjustments were originally scheduled to take place on July 1, 2020; however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and unknown circumstances surrounding potential loss of revenues, city administration determined it would be “prudent and advisable” to pause the implementation until January. But now that city revenues are doing better than projected, city administration wants to implement the adjustments on Nov. 2.
The city’s newly formed “Frontline Focus: Employee Market Adjustments” group, which includes the Budget Team, has monitored the numbers closely through the fiscal year and supports this recommendation, noted the staff report.
Rodriguez thanked the council for “really trusting” staff recommendations on the employee pay adjustments. He noted that staff worked “very diligently with new challenges and issues attached this year that are unlike anything we’ve ever seen. They continue to serve very well, but this will go a long way in saying thank you to the employees.”
Knight agreed that the raises are well deserved. “I understand the trials and tribulations at City Hall through this COVID period, and our employees, I can’t say enough, they’ve been excellent in getting the work done even though some of them were doing the work at home. Some were coming in two, three days a week, or whatever was needed. But they got the work done, and personally I’m really appreciative of that. It goes to show they’re totally deserving of what we’re able to do tonight,” he said.
Rodriguez thanked Knight for coming up with the idea of pursuing the Yuma Cares fund infusion and Nicholls for the idea of using CARES Act relief funds to help small businesses through a grant program that will soon wrap up. He also noted that the city’s rental assistance program has also significantly helped a “countless families.