With a budget burdened by higher fuel, insurance and pension costs, Santa Rosa is increasingly relying on volunteers to keep the city’s 66 parks tidy, a service once considered a basic government function.

Santa Rosa agreed to continue funding the Community Media Center of the North Bay for another six months while a community-wide discussion takes place about how to replace the nonprofit with something more collaborative, innovative and less expensive for taxpayers.

The Community Media Center of the North Bay would close at the end of June and eventually be reborn as an innovative partnership under a proposal heading to the Santa Rosa City Council today.

Santa Rosa recently declined to pay for the printing of a neighborhood newsletter that named council members who voted in favor of allowing the BoDean asphalt plant to expand.

Santa Rosa’s gang prevention program has a new manager and a new home.

The diversity of the programming shows the 16-year-old Community Media Center of the North Bay has been fulfilling its mission of giving the residents access to media technology and training they might not have had otherwise. But tight city budgets and the easy availability of smartphones, YouTube and other new technology have the city slashing funding for the center and rethinking what kind of media services the community needs in the future.