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Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney has stripped raises, vacant positions and plans for new jobs from the city’s spending plan to address a $38.5 million hole anticipated in next year’s budget.

Plans for the fiscal year beginning July 1, which Stoney unveiled just as the coronavirus was reaching Virginia, tallied $782.6 million; Stoney on Monday released revised operating plans to the City Council that tally $744.1 million, a nearly 5% reduction. The city’s operating budget for the current fiscal year is $746 million.

“We are looking at a significant shortfall in terms of our projections for this current fiscal year and for fiscal year 2021 as well,” Stoney warned in a news conference last week.

“I’m asking the community to buckle up because we’re going to have to look at some significant losses.”

With about 800 confirmed coronavirus cases in the area and nearly 150,000 Virginians filing jobless claims in the week ending April 4, city officials are wondering whether a recession will alter consumer spending even after things become relatively normal again.

Disease-related deaths in the area — driven by an outbreak at a long-term rehabilitative care center in Henrico County — have made up about one-third of the nearly 150 reported deaths statewide.