COVID-19 Will Have an Impact on Both Lafayette and West Lafayettes City Budgets

COVID-19 Will Have an Impact on Both Lafayette and West Lafayettes City Budgets

As the stay at home order continues, fewer dollars are flowing through our local economy, in turn affecting city budgets.

Local economy..

In turn affecting city budgets.

News 18's meredith hackler spoke with both the west lafayette and lafayette mayor about what this means for the future.

Meredith?

Jeff..

Both mayors agree that covid-19 will have a significant impact on their overall bugets.

In fact mayor tony roswarski said they have already lost an estimatetwo million dollars..

However planning for the future is difficult since at this point in time the future is unclear.

Ever since march 24th the state of indiana..

Has been on lock down..

Which has taken a toll on local economies.

"our hope is that we'll be able to maintain services and staffing that we have always had..

But i can't gaurantee that i don't think any elected official can."- mayor dennis with a decrease in spending on local businesses there is less sales tax coming in..

And with unemployment numbers on the rise..

Cities have less income tax going towards the budget.

"our budgets have to be balanced we can't run a deficit.

We don't have that ability like the federal government does so everything has to be in balance."-mayor roswarski and the harderst part about obtaining that balance..

Is that the future is unknown..

Especially for west lafayette whose population has changed due to the virus.

"we've lost half of our population this has changed how we do businesses the one on one interactivity we've done with police fire and our customers oriented businesses have changed radically."-dennis.

And while local government is still operating and moving economic projects forward.

"we are continuing to do those things so when we can open up or even partially open up we are not behind, we've kept moving within local government to ensure that we can try to recover as quickly as possible."- roswarski it's unclear what changes may come in the future.

"we are literally all in this together those that provide services and those that recieve services and if we continue to stay together we will through this intact."- dennis.

While mayor john dennis wasn't able to share any projects that will be pushed back..

Mayor tony roswarski said the city had been planning on investing around 2 million dollars to renovate the lafayette theater..

He says that project will now be pushed back.

Live in lafayette meredith hackler news 18.

The state health department is