The Port Arthur City Council got its first look at the Fiscal Year 2019 budget this week, and councilmembers were told it would a “status quo” document that maximizes the city’s recovery from Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey.

In the document presented Tuesday night, Interim City Manager Harvey Robinson and Assistant City Manager Rebecca Underhill noted that the city has “yet to recoup” most of the funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the city’s expenses during the storm event of August 2017 and its aftermath and for restoration of Port Arthur’s infrastructure and facilities.

“Much of the staff time and financial resources continue to be expended in recovery efforts,” they wrote in a budget introduction. “Meanwhile, management is assessing service levels and in some cases redistributing scarce resources to most effectively provide quality services to the citizens.”

Robinson and Underhill wrote that the city had projected a deficit in fiscal 2017, which ends Sept. 30, but instead saved $5.67 million, mostly because of vacant positions and because some city operations — the Bob Bowers Civic Center, until recently, and the library, still — were closed.

The proposed budget, Underhill said before Tuesday’s meeting, is balanced and reflects a growth of four positions, from 752 to 756, and an increase from $109.6 million to $113.5 million.

She said the budget would maintain fiscal responsibility, fund capital projects and maximize mitigation funding.

“We’ve spent $27 million,” she said, of storm-related costs, but the only money the city has received has been for clean-up.

She said FEMA continues to assess damages to Port Arthur’s infrastructure and roads.

“They’re out there today,” she said. “We have not yet determined how much damage FEMA owes.”

The process, she said, is painstaking. But damages will total in the “tens of millions” for infrastructure, buildings, parks, lift stations, pump stations — “the whole gamut of everything we own.”

Underhill said City Council work sessions on the budget are scheduled for Aug. 21 and 28 and a public hearing will beheld in a special meeting Sept. 4. On Sept. 11, the council will consider an ordinance on the budget.

Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year, is the deadline for passing the budget.