IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Riverside has agreed to cut spending by 10 percent, and hire nurses and other medical professionals rather than two police officers who would have worked with homeless people.
The 2020-2021 budget, which the city council approved this month, goes into effect July 1 and will be reviewed every three months to make sure there’s enough money to pay for each budgeted item, according to a statement on the city’s website.
The quarterly reviews are needed because of COVID-19, which has scrambled the city’s economy.
Riverside will also shift to a different method of budgeting, in which the city will establish ranked priorities and allocate money based on those rankings. Until now Riverside has budgeted each department and made incremental changes when needed, the method used by most cities.
The budget postponed action on a new police headquarters for at least one year, saving $2.1 million. It also eliminated incentives that could have been used to hire officers from other departments, according to the statement.
