Budget Cuts Coming to City of Cedar Rapids Departments

With many of their offices and buildings still closed until at least September 8, the City of Cedar Rapids is now facing potential budget cuts to the amount of 10 percent across the board.

They have begun to look at where further cuts can be made. To start with, vacant city positions are remaining unfilled until a budget reduction plan is completed and submitted for the first quarter of fiscal year 2021. They are expected to record a revenue loss of $3 million due to the pandemic. That includes losses to the following revenue sources: road use tax, local options sales tax, State of Iowa Flood Mitigation revenue, hotel-motel tax, charges for services like city swimming pools, convention center, and hotel revenue, along with revenue from recreational venues and investment income.

As mentioned above, several city offices and city-owned venues and properties have been temporarily closed. They are reducing training, cutting back on conferences, and they've also had to refinance debt which has saved $13 million according to KCRG. But they might have to do more.

Requests from the city to the Iowa Department of Revenue for numbers on specific areas of losses in revenue are expected to be received and assessed by September, at which point they will look at what other steps they can take to reduce costs.

One of the city's historically largest employers, Collins Aerospace recently announced an undisclosed number of layoffs and businesses everywhere are having to do the same to make up for losses incurred by this challenging time no one expected.