BETTENDORF-- Mayor Robert Gallagher praised the many projects underway in Bettendorf during the annual State of the City Address Wednesday, February 21.
Looking ahead, he says the city will start to see projects like the TBK Sports Complex start to pay off as early as this summer.
“TBK will open the first week in May to a baseball tournament to more than 100 teams. (That) will bring almost 3 thousand people to our area. (People) are booking through the summer for baseball. They are booking through the summer for soccer,” says Gallagher.
Gallagher says more projects are on the way which include outside attractions by the new I-74 Bridge and the apartment buildings replacing Twin Bridges Motor Inn in the city’s downtown area.
…Residential home being built will start to come on the rolls, and the commercial property buildings start to come on the rolls. As they do that will increase the revenues just based on the new growth alone,” says Gallagher.
An increase in revenue that will help offset a nearly $1.9 million unexpected budget shortfall last year. This came after housing reassessment percentages came in lower than expected, and a decrease in tax revenue.
“We were told to expect an almost 10 percent increase, we budgeted for 6 percent the numbers came in closer to 4 and a half…It isn’t anything where you point a finger and say somebody made a mistake it’s just something where we budgeted for numbers where we thought might be higher. We made educated guesses in our budget,” says Gallagher.
Since then, the city has put in place an early retirement package for employing considering retirement over the next few years. They will also not hire any new employees to help take care of the budget concerns.
Mayor Gallagher says he does not expect last year’s financial shortcoming to impact the 2018-2019 budget.