Report Prepared by: Venus Rodriguez, Finance Officer
Title
SUBJECT: Approval of a Supplemental Appropriation in the Amount of $150,000 from the Unencumbered, Unreserved General Fund Balance to Cover Expenditures Due to COVID-19
REPORT IN BRIEF
Approving a supplemental appropriation in the amount of $150,000 from the unencumbered, unreserved General Fund balance to cover expenditures due to COVID-19.
RECOMMENDATION
City Council - Adopt a motion:
A. Approving a supplemental appropriation in the amount of $150,000 from the unencumbered, unreserved General Fund balance to cover expenditures due to COVID-19; and
B. Authorizing the Finance Officer to make any necessary budget adjustments necessary.
Body
ALTERNATIVES
1. Approve, as recommended by staff; or,
2. Approve subject to other than recommended by staff (identify specific findings and or conditions amended to be addressed by City Council motion); or,
3. Deny; or,
4. Refer back to staff for reconsideration of specific items (specific items to be addresses in the motion); or
5. Continue to a future meeting (date and time to be specified in the motion).
AUTHORITY
Merced City Charter, Section 1105
CITY COUNCIL PRIORITIES
City Council ratified Local Emergency due to COVID-19 on March 16,2020 with Resolution 2020-10
DISCUSSION
Background
The novel coronavirus outbreak began in Wuhan China in 2019 and spread across the globe and into the United States. As of 8 a.m. Friday, March 23, 2020, there is one positive case of COVID-19 in Merced County, and 1,816 in California with 35 deaths.
Friday, March 13, 2020, the President of the United States declared a national emergency due to the outbreak. Also, on Friday, Merced County declared a state of emergency. This followed the March 4, 2020 state of emergency that was declared by Gov. Newsom. The City of Merced City Manager also declared a local emergency as the Director of Emergency Services.
On March 18th, 2020, the City of Merced moved to a Level 2 Emergency Operations Center (EOC) activation. This decision was made due to the number of resources (personnel) that were currently working on the incident. The decision was made to move the EOC to the secondary location of Sam Pipes room, located on the first floor of City Hall due to the ability to expand as needed while maintaining the appropriate social distancing requirements. This also provided the ability to utilize the fire departments training room as a secondary dispatch center or call taking facility, should the need arise.
The EOC is currently utilizing the Incident Command System (ICS) and has a fully established management and general staff. The management staff consists of the EOC Director - Steve Carrigan, EOC Coordinator - Billy Alcorn, Safety Officer - Jeff Hakola/Rosa Winzer, Information Officer - Mike Conway/Jim Evans/Nate Frankhauser, Liaison Officer - Stephanie Dietz/Mickey Brunelli, and Legal Officer - Phaedra Norton. The general staff consists of the Planning Section - Casey Wilson/Scott McBride, Logistics Section - Jeremy Franklin/Frank Quintero, Operations Section - Tom England/Ken Elwin, and the Finance Section - Venus Rodriguez/Julie Trujillo.
Within each of these sections is multiple divisions, branches, or groups that have employees working within their section to accomplish the EOC’s management and control objectives. As this event expands, more employees will be called in to work as needed and fulfill the additional positions within the ICS structure.
One of the items to consider under the logistics section is procurement. Procurement is tasked with purchasing items needed for or associated with the event. Each of the requests being sent to procurement are necessary items, but unexpected therefore, unbudgeted in the current fiscal year’s budget. Due to the complexity and proposed duration of this incident, we anticipate numerous unbudgeted costs, including employee overtime and supplies.
City employees are tracking time and expenses so when Federal and/or State government provides information regarding potential reimbursement for COVID-19 emergency costs, we will be ready to submit our request based on allowable costs. It is unlikely we will receive 100% reimbursement of City costs but will continue to monitor the information as it is provided.
IMPACT ON CITY RESOURCES
A supplemental appropriation in the amount of $150,000 is needed from the unreserved, unencumbered General Fund balance in order to cover unexpected and unbudgeted costs due to COVID-19.