Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis said Congress needs to act now to help out local governments.
"We know that many small businesses are on the ropes right now, and guess what? So is the city," the mayor said Tuesday. "Not only did many small businesses not get in on the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program), the federal government hasn't allocated one dime to local municipalities, either."
The CARES Act provided federal aid only to cities with more than 500,000 residents. A fourth coronavirus relief bill currently moving through Congress also omits funding for state or local governments.
The Peoria City Council is currently looking at up to $50 million worth of cuts and borrowing after COVID-19 throttled the economy.
The city has projected a 54% dip in restaurant taxes, 64% decrease in hotel taxes, and 39% decline in local sales taxes in 2020. Hits to property tax collections, licensing and permitting fees, motor fuel tax revenue, income tax allocations from the state, and other state funding are also anticipated.
The mayor said he's pressed U.S. Reps. Darin LaHood (R) and Cheri Bustos (D), and Sen. Dick Durbin's chief of staff, about the need for immediate local government assistance.
"They know something has to be done before the majority of cities in this country literally implode. And I'm not being dramatic. That's where we are," Ardis said.
The mayor said the U.S. Conference of Mayors is also lobbying Congress for more local government funding.
Many counties and municipalities are compiling small business applications for the state's Downstate Stabilization Fund, which is seeded with $20 million in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding to help businesses pull through the stay-at-home order.
Cities like Peoria and Pekin, which receive CDBG funds directly from the federal government, aren't eligible for the program. Peoria is due about $1.7 million, and Pekin about $1 million. Those funds haven't arrived yet.
East Peoria Mayor John Kahl said while the virus doesn't have an end date, he thinks a phased reopening is possible starting in May.
"I think that we could reopen business through reduced occupancy with social distancing guidelines in place, sanitation," he said. "You know, it comes down to people having individual responsibility to do the right thing. I think it can be done."
East Peoria has projected a $5.4 million budget shortfall this year due to the coronavirus.
Ardis' message to the community was blunt: "Please don't blow it now" by abandoning social distancing.
"It's really important that we all remain vigilant. We all want to get things going again, but we have to be very vigilant and very careful about that," he said. "I ask you to seriously help us with these measures, so when the governor does look at potentially look at opening up certain regions of the state that show that they're ready and prepared to do so, that Central Illinois is part of that group."
The Tri-County region has seen relatively few confirmed COVID-19 cases to date. Eighty-one confirmed cases and six deaths linked to COVID-19 complications are reported in Peoria, Tazewell, and Woodford counties. Hospital ICU and ventilator usage is low compared to other parts of the state and country.
Ardis hopes the addition of three Heartland Health Services COVID-19 test collection sites in the coming days will help give public health officials a better picture of virus containment in the region. Peoria City/County Health Department Administrator Monica Hendrickson said those sites are just one step in gathering data needed to make an informed decision about when to begin relaxing restrictions.
Current data includes positive tests, ICU usage, telehealth service usage, and police and fire response data.
"All of that data is really what we're going to be utilizing to understand where we sit as a community, until we have better surveillance such as antibody testing available," she said.
She said when and how to reopen the economy is a topic of discussion among her colleagues in public health.
"I still think it's too soon to think about relaxing any type of restrictions. I think it needs to be a phased approach. And understanding, it's not going to be a yes/no, but very much a gradient that we're going to see," she said.
Hendrickson said there's reluctance among public health officials to begin lifting restrictions until the capacity to consistenly test is increased. She said health officials are also concerned about their ability to quickly reimplement stay-at-home restrictions if cases begin to spike again after an initial easing.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Tuesday projections anticipate Illinois might hit a "peak" of COVID-19 cases around mid-May. This is later than previous models that predicted a mid-April peak before the state began to substantially flatten the curve through social distancing.
Both Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot hinted Tuesday that the stay-at-home order currently slated to end April 30 may be extended into May.
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