Sugar Land officials recommended Thursday that starting salaries for police and fire personnel be increased in the coming fiscal year, while the city manager recommended postponing the acquisition of a $285,000 piece of public art.   Fire, police salary increases proposed Human resources director Paula Kutchka proposed at last week’s budget workshop that city council members increase police officers’ and firefighters’ starting salaries by 6.6 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively, for fiscal year 2018. “In [Sugar Land’s] compensation policy, the city’s philosophy is that starting salaries be set at the 75th percentile of our benchmark group,” Kutchka said. The compensation policy, adopted by city council in May 2013, provides the guiding principles for determining employee compensation, she said. Currently, the minimum annual salary is $52,853 for police officers and $48,922 for firefighters, according to the city’s website. “We are making this recommendation because adjustments are needed so that we do not lose our position within the competitive market,” Kutchka said. The FY 2018 budget includes $1.37 million for the proposed merit pool, according to meeting documents. The proposed changes, if approved by council, would become effective January 2018. Council member Bridget Yeung supported the increases. “I completely support this with our employees, and I’m so proud of the employees that we have in this city and everything that they have done,” Yeung said. “For us to come back and say, ‘we don’t want to increase their salaries,’ I just have a very difficult time with that.” Art project may be cut from budget The city may cancel the purchase of a $285,000 sculpture as part of the city’s public arts program after council members balked at the price tag. City officials budgeted the money to buy the sculpture as recommended by the city’s Parks, Art, Recreation, Culture, and Streetscapes Board, with the city planning to pay $57,000 per year for five years, with the first payment scheduled to be made in FY 2018, according to meeting documents. “Based on council feedback that was expressed to city management, the recommendation would be to remove the piece of the project at this time and have some future discussions related to this,” City Manager Allen Bogard said. “The removal of the project would reduce the overall [public art program’s] expenditures [for FY 2018] by about $42,000 because there’s a $15,000 expense associated with returning the piece of artwork.”   The $42,000 saved be would reallocated to Sugar Land’s 4B corporation fund to be used for other projects related to economic development, public art, or historic preservation, Budget Officer Justin Alderete said.   Council member Carol McCutcheon said the city should look to private sponsorships for high-cost art acquisitions. “I agree that when the dollar amount gets to a certain level for one particular piece that we need to have some sort of matching funds—some sort of sponsorship—from the private sector,” McCutcheon said. Hurricane damage assessments could take months Costs associated with the emergency response to Hurricane Harvey will be reimbursed from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, director of finance Jennifer Brown said, adding that that amount needs to be determined, and the timeframe to receive those reimbursements are unknown. The city is still waiting on a small amount of reimbursement funds from Hurricane Ike in 2008, Brown  said. Bogard said it could take months for the city to conduct damage assessments and prioritize repair costs. Brown said in accordance with its financial management guidelines, the city maintains a general fund balance minimum of 25 percent of recurring operating expenditures. Based on the proposed budget, the minimum general fund balance, as required by the city's financial management policy statement, for FY 2018 is $19.98 million, Brown said. “We’re also having the impact of our businesses being closed for nearly a week,” Brown said. “We’re going to have an impact to our August sales tax collection, which we will see in October. We also have a waiver of the state and local hotel occupancy tax for evacuees, so we will see an impact to our next quarter hotel occupancy receipts. However much that is, we don’t know.” Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a proclamation suspending laws authorizing or requiring the collection of state or local hotel occupancy taxes from the evacuees or personnel participating in relief operations from Aug. 23 to Sept. 6, Brown said.