The City of North Royalton continues to hold its own financially, despite the impact of the pandemic. North Royalton Finance Director Eric Dean recently reported to the North Royalton City Council Finance Committee, updating them on the city’s status.
According to Dean, there was a $62,231 increase in tax collections for August. Year-to-date, however, he said that it was down, $474,000. He added that it was expected, as “when we did the original budget for the year, we didn’t expect to have the record year we did last year. We don’t budget for the money we think we’ll get, we budget for money that we know we’ll get.” Over the past ten years, the City, on average, has had an increase in tax receipts of about $200,000 to $400,000. Last year, however, the receipts jumped close to $1 million. Dean recognized that as something out of the norm and was not expecting a jump that large for this year.
Overtime costs for the city for this year are at 50.46% of the proposed budget as of August 25. The proposed budget for overtime is $844,800 and the actual costs were at $426,306. For the same time last year, the city was at 68%. “It’s way better this year,” Dean said, regarding overtime costs.
There was a $3.15 million in the General Fund carryover from 2019 to 2020. At this point, Dean thinks the city will exceed that going into 2021. We are in good shape budget-wise,” said Dean. “Of course, we don’t know what will happen next year. We know that there is a delay in the lost revenue that we will have.”
The City of North Royalton had received funding, primarily through the Federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) act. The City had received COVID-19 funding through the CARES act in the amount of $365,000 in June and again in the summer, receiving an additional $182,000, according to Dean. Earlier this year, a separate fund has been established for COVID-19 funds received and expenditures made.
On September 23, the Ohio General Assembly voted to disburse the remaining federal CARES act funding to the local governments in Ohio. That distributes about $650 million of the federal funding, in addition to the previous $525 million. Dean said he is expecting the city to receive $1,080,000.00, ultimately totaling about $1.6 million in CARES funding. The city was expected to have the funds by the end of September. They have to have that money encumbered by mid-November. Some of the items that the money will be utilized for are fire equipment upgrade for safety measures; employment costs of any city employee who has had to be quarantined; time paid for COVID-related issues, according to Dean.
“Coming out of this COVID recession, we are in pretty good shape,” said Dean. “We are up almost a million over last year.”

By GLORIA PLEVA KACIK
Contributing Writer