Kansas City must find another $60M in cuts because of COVID-19 economy, mayor says
Kansas City’s city departments will make another round of cuts — this time to the tune of $60 million — to address the gaping budget hole created by COVID-19.
All departments have been asked to forecast reductions because of a decline in tax revenue, Mayor Quinton Lucas announced Wednesday.
“This is painful,” said city spokesman Chris Hernandez. “We provide approximately 400 programs and services across all of our departments, and so all of those could be impacted in one way or another.”
Details of the 11% cuts will be revealed in the next budget proposal, set to be released in February and voted on in March. Kansas City’s fiscal years run from May 1 to April 30.
The cuts follow a 4.5% reduction in most departments — or about $50 million — recently made to the current budget, prompting furloughs, the elimination of customer service positions and reduced maintenance services.
“Those were pretty hard-hitting cuts,” Hernandez said.
Other reductions were made through savings that naturally came as a result of the pandemic. Numerous events and conventions that would have required staffing were canceled.
Under the first round of cuts, the police and fire departments decreased their budgets by 2.25%.
The pandemic could cause a shortfall of more than $200 million in the next few years, according to the city’s Finance Department.
