By Linda Kor During the June 23 Holbrook City Council meeting, Mayor Merrill Young introduced a resolution for approval by the council for the expenditure of a $582,677 AZ CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) grant. These funds are not budgeted funds and it was noted that the funds could not be used towards expenses that were incurred prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, noted as March 1 of this year. The city has determined that the best use for those funds would be to pay the city’s spending responsibility pertaining to the Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS) costs incurred by the Holbrook Police Department for the time frame of March 1, 2020, and Dec. 1, 2020. As part of the discussion, Vice Mayor Francie Payne noted, “I wonder if we can’t do a little better job of getting more information out to the public. There’s some resentment that it’s going to this at the same time that we’re raising rates,” she stated, referring to the proposed increase to sanitation rates. “There’s also some cleanup that we’d like to have done, things like that. I think if we would be committed getting more information out I could support it.” Young explained, “By paying down this fund, it lessons our annual liability. By lessoning our annual liability, that’s more money that we can put back into the operations of the city. This is a liability that’s not going to go away and the more we take off of it means the more we put back into the budget on an annual basis.” Councilman Adam Marsh added his thoughts stating, “We’re $7.8 million in the hole for our public safety retirement. That’s more than the entire opening budget of the city for an entire year. While this can’t go directly to that fund, because those funds have already been allocated, it does offset that in its own way. It’s important to know that this can’t go to sanitation or wastewater because those are separate funds with separate allocated dollars and this comes in and out of the general fund unlike the other separate funds.” Following the discussion, the motion was unanimously approved by all members of the council.
