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By KEVIN McCALLUM
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
The Santa Rosa City Council begins two days of budget hearings today in an attempt to plug a $3.8 million deficit in next year’s budget.
How the council acts will determine whether pools are closed, fees are hiked and how parks are maintained for the budget year that begins July 1.
After two years of shrinking budgets, city officials and council members are not particularly looking forward to the process. “We’re getting down to the meat and bone,” said David Heath, the city’s chief financial officer.
So far, the city has focused on cuts that have the least impact on services the community most values, Heath said. But the cuts made earlier this year and set to be extended, plus new cuts in the upcoming budget year, are going to be hard to miss, he said.
“I think this is the year that people are really going to start feeling it,” he said.
Senior Planner Peter Brown is certainly feeling it. He just got his pink slip last week after his position in the long-range planning department was eliminated, saving about $100,000.
If the council upholds his layoff, a department that once had four planners will have one, he said. The Sonoma County native with 10 years of experience and two master’s degrees said he has been applying for jobs in Sacramento, Oakland and Washington, D.C.
The council had the option of cutting Brown’s position earlier this year, but community members rallied to his defense, noting that he works on popular projects such as bicycle and pedestrian improvements to Mendocino Avenue.
Brown said city leaders appear to be trying to “balance 100 percent of the cuts on the backs of a few departments,” while sparing police and fire, which make up two-thirds of the general-fund budget.
Interim City Manager Wayne Goldberg said that two rounds of budget cutting this year have resulted in service reductions noticed by the public. Shorter counter hours at the Community Development Department and sharp reductions in parks maintenance, including less park irrigation, are being noticed, Goldberg said.
His proposed budget calls for $2.5 million in employee concessions and $1.3 million in additional revenue to balance the city’s general fund, the portion of the budget over which the council has the most direct control.
Next year that fund is estimated to be $109 million, down 18 percent from the 2007-08 budget year, when it hit an all-time high of $133 million.
That $109 million figure, however, is a moving target. It depends heavily on sales tax and property tax revenue, both of which the city has been woefully inaccurate in predicting in recent years.
“We’ve missed the mark on that several times,” Goldberg said.
Also unknown is whether the state will try to balance its budget by taking funds from local governments, a development that would worsen the city’s budget woes, Goldberg said.
City officials have not announced whether they have secured concessions from most city unions. Those talks are private and ongoing.
Nor has the council tipped its hand to what kind of revenue measures it might support. A quarter-cent sales tax, lifting the cap on a business tax, a $50 parcel tax and a cell-phone tax have been mentioned as possibilities for a fall ballot measure.
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Spend it on a fire station!
Thanks, Ted. To Sidewinder: I think it is the responsibility of both the City and the local paper to publicize such events, and I don’t think I should have to engage in a scavenger hunt to find out where the meeting will take place. It’s bad enough that almost all city business takes place when people who have to work, or look for work, can’t attend.
I will try to attend tomorrow. Not to comment, not even to take notes, but just to reassess. I’ve met a number of members of the City Council over the years, liked some, been unimpressed by others, disagreed with but respected others.
From my point of view, the developer vs environmentalist/labor divide is exactly what I don’t like about local politics. So I just tend to look for who has the intelligence to both work with an annoying coalition, and get the pragmatic basics done. I’m thinking Wysocky & Sawyer, possibly Gorin, possibly Olivares, definitely not Vas Dupre or Jacobi. Wysocki may care more about bike paths than I do, and that may be useful in the Tour of California era, but it was my impression when I worked him a little in 2008 that he was smart and basically had his head screwed on straight. If I attend, it will be in large part to see if I still think so.
It’s true, Sidewinder, I don’t have much more to contribute right now. Which is why I’d like to get the basic assistance of the local paper to help me remedy that. Thanks for your concern.
I hope that they remember that the government is there to serve the people and not the other way around. They must sustain the services and postpone capital projects. They also need to get City employee wages back to earth. Many of the City employees would never make what they are earning on the open market.
Sorry, akr. City Council started budget hearings at 9 a.m. today in the council chambers. They plan to break around noon for lunch and resume around 1 p.m. A similar session will be held on Thursday and, if necessary, on Friday.
Here’s a link to the agenda for the week:
http://ci.santa-rosa.ca.us/doclib/agendas_packets_minutes/Pages/20100615_CC_agenda.aspx
Ted
AKR, the term “hearing” doesn’t indicate it’s public, but the term “public hearing” does. It’s the City’s responsibility to provide info about attending public meetings, not the Press Democrat’s. It sounds like you are suggesting the City and/or Press Democrat aren’t being transparent when maybe you’re the one not looking in the right place. Will you attend or just complain online?
When & where are these budget hearings to be held? As they are hearings, I would expect that they are open to the public, but if the public doesn’t know when or where to go . . . not really.
(And I know we face very tough choices, and that some members of the public will not respond well even to reasonable unfortunate decisions . . . but what’s the point of the story if you don’t say where the hearings are going to be held?)