The $83,837,945 city budget for 2004-05 made its first public
appearance Wednesday night and caused hardly a ripple before the
City Council unanimously sent it on its way to a June 16
adoption.
The $83,837,945 city budget for 2004-05 made its first public appearance Wednesday night and caused hardly a ripple before the City Council unanimously sent it on its way to a June 16 adoption.
Council had devoted an entire day last month going over every part of the complete budget, with city staff answering questions. No one from the public had any comment on the spending plan Wednesday.
A more flexible segment of the total budget is the $17,180,423 general fund, almost 65 percent of which is spent on police and fire protection. The remainder is dedicated to recreation programs (14.8 percent), park maintenance (3.8 percent) and city administration.
Council heard Finance Director Jack Dilles detail $100,000 in cuts, added to $800,000 in cuts already excised from staff numbers, service cuts, council expenses and a bit of magic moving a few general fund salaries to other funds with room to grow. Roughly $900,000 from the city’s reserve fund was used to close the budget gap, leaving $8,236,787 in the reserve fund by June 30, 2005.
The original gap in 2004-05 was close to $2 million.
Staff has cut at least 5 percent from its budgets in each of the past two years, trying to get expenses down to the level of revenues.
The extra $100,000 had to be cut after the extent of tax take-aways by the state Legislature and the governor became clear.
Most cuts are meant to be permanent and are services or service levels council and staff consider expendable.
Councilman Greg Sellers said he was concerned over eliminating services that can’t be reversed, such as relandscaping the perimeters of city parks, reducing the need for water and maintenance.
“What is our loss if we made these improvements (installing parks) with Redevelopment Agency funds and are now replacing it,” Sellers asked. “We are making permanent changes.”
City Manager Ed Tewes said the reductions must be permanent if the city budget strategy is to be on track by June 30, 2008. The strategy is to balance the budget and bring the reserve fund down from 40 percent to the council-approved 25 percent by that time.
The shortfall of $900,000 in 2004-05 is projected to be trailed by a gap of $400,000 in 2005-06.
Councilman Steve Tate praised the staff for finding cuts where no cut was obvious and for taking the brunt on themselves, sparing the public in service reductions as much as possible.
“In previous years we’ve been able to add services,” Tate said. “Now we must make cuts and we must give credit to the staff for coming up with these budget cuts.”
