By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, Sea Isle City will maintain about the same level of spending in the 2021 municipal budget as it did this year and plans to go “full force” with its family-friendly lineup of summer entertainment, Mayor Leonard Desiderio said Wednesday.
“Everything pretty much is staying status quo,” Desiderio said in an interview after he was presented with budget requests from the city’s department heads.
He is not yet ready to say whether the budget will include a tax increase or decrease or simply stay at the same rate. He traditionally announces the municipal budget and tax rate during his annual State of the City address in February.
Sea Isle’s $25 million operating budget for 2020 kept local taxes stable. Water and sewer rates remained the same for the seventh year in a row.
Taking an optimistic view, Desiderio said Sea Isle is positioning itself for a strong recovery in 2021 following the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis. Like other communities at the Jersey Shore, Sea Isle was forced to cancel many of its family-friendly summer tourism events due to the pandemic.
“We’re looking for a great 2021. We’ve done an excellent job in dealing with something that we’ve never dealt with before,” Desiderio said of the city’s response to the pandemic.
He added, “I think we’ve done a pretty good job in Sea Isle of keeping everybody safe.”
After the pandemic struck early in the year, Sea Isle halted key parts of its $100,000 tourism campaign amid uncertainty about the summer vacation season. Popular entertainment events such as the city’s festivals, outdoor concerts and family movie nights had to be shelved.
The city also made the decision not to print its annual visitors guide, a compendium of local attractions, special events and other information helpful to vacationers. Before the pandemic hit, there were plans to print 40,000 copies of the guide.
When the coronavirus outbreak caused the cancellation of so many events, it was impossible to include the city’s entertainment calendar in the visitors guide.
Desiderio said the city has every intention of reviving its family entertainment events for the 2021 summer season.
“We’re anticipating going full force,” he said. “We don’t see cutting anything back unless it’s necessary.”
Katherine Custer, the city’s public information officer and director of Community Services, said there are plans to print the visitors guide in 2021 and promote the town in other ways to “keep our name out there as a vibrant destination for travelers.”
After Custer and other department heads presented their budget requests to Desiderio on Wednesday, he responded by thanking them and other city employees for “going above and beyond the call of duty,” especially while facing the challenges of the pandemic.
He urged them to stay together to “lead by example.”
“Let’s hope 2021 is a much better year,” he told them during a budget discussion conducted by teleconference.
Although municipal spending is expected to remain close to the same level as now in 2021, the city is looking to add to some of its staff during the summer.
There are plans to add more lifeguards in the north end of town and more beach tag inspectors will be hired so they can spread out across the city,” Desiderio said in the interview.
In recent years, Desiderio has made Sea Isle’s strong finances a recurring theme in his State of the City address. For the 2020 budget, he reported that the city’s budget surplus had grown to $6.4 million, the highest it has ever been and nearly double the surplus amount seven years ago.
Sea Isle’s average home is assessed at $674,873. As an upscale shore resort, Sea Isle does not receive a lot of state aid to pad its budget. Desiderio indicated that the municipal budget should be in good shape for 2021, even if the city continues to receive only a small amount of state aid.
“Right now, we’re good,” he said. “We just want to see what the future brings.”
