City
Budget Passes Half-Billion Mark |
By Jorge Casuso
June 18 -- Briefly falling $82,000 short -- or as one
council member jokingly put it, “close enough to zero”
-- the City Council Tuesday unanimously approved a record $524.7
million budget for fiscal year 2008-09.
The balanced budget represented a $43 million hike over the previous
year’s budget, furthering a trend that has seen the City’s
revenues and expenses swell over the past decade, while Santa Monica’s
population remains relatively stable at about 85,000.
The general fund budget used to deliver services -- which is bankrolled
by taxes, grants and service charges -- grew to $252 million, from
$245.8 million, or an expenditure of nearly $3,000 per resident.
Ten years ago, it was $107 million, or about $1,900 per resident.
("Great
Expectations or Spending Spree?" June 16, 2003)
While the budget, which had been hammered out and discussed during
three council study sessions, surpassed the half-billion-dollar
mark, the council Tuesday night focused on the discretionary use
of half a million in one-time funds.
The money will be used for the following:
- $119,000 for additional tree maintenance,
- $40,000 for Pier Holiday lights,
- $32,000 for the Cal Safe Program to provide counseling to young
parents,
- $100,000 for public art maintenance,
- $200,000 for a signal on PCH at the 1440 PCH lot and
- $10,000 to towards Third Street Historic District identity program.
With $419,000 left to play with, that left the council $82,000
short.
“Eighty-two is close enough to zero,” Council member
Ken Genser joked. “It’s just one time. We just may be
close enough for government work.”
But Assistant City Attorney Joe Lawrence warned that “technically
a budget has to be balanced,” prompting the council to borrow
the balance from an account that will be repaid.
In addition to the last-minute spending decisions, the council
directed staff to segregate airport fines for “neighborhood
friendly” mitigation projects, consistent with applicable
law. It also directed staff to return by midyear with a review of
the current Fire Department dispatch system and review alternatives.
There have been complaints since the department contracted with
the Los Angeles Fire Department Regional Dispatch Center on January
2007 in an effort to improve Fire Department radio communication
capabilities and dispatching services.
The current system, which costs $2.4 million, was chosen after
nine options were explored over the period of a year and a half,
Fire Chief Jim Hone told the council.
“I don’t recommend to go back where we were,”
Hone said.
Putting in a system “just to communicate effectively”
would cost between $1.5 and $3 million, Hone said. It would cost
another $1.2 million to staff the system, which could also require
a supervisor.
But council members said they were concerned enough with the current
system to call for a reevaluation.
“It just isn’t up to the expectations that we had,”
said Council member Kevin McKeown. The City, he said, “should
accelerate the process of looking at this.”
The City’s first budget to exceed $500 million -- which City
Manager Lamont Ewell has said could be viewed as “very aggressive”
-- adds 45 full-time equivalent personnel for “essential positions,”
12 of them paid for with the general fund. ("City
Manager Proposes Record Budget," May 21, 2008)
The rest are paid for with non-general fund revenues that include
$65 million in earthquake redevelopment funds bankrolled by increased
tax assessments when a property changes hands -- money that normally
would go to the County to pay for services.
About half of all the new positions – which will be funded
in part by proposed increases to beach parking rates – will
staff the $27.5 million Annenberg Beach House at 415 Pacific Coast
Highway, which is scheduled to open next spring.
The budget also adds four full-time Police Department employees
and three full-time Fire Department employees.
In another change to the budget presented last month, the final
budget adds a building inspector to help with the Building and Safety
Division’s green building inspection workload at a salary
of $73,718. The increase is offset by the elimination of a vacant
disaster relief position in the Finance Department that paid $119,240.
The council Tuesday also directed staff to prepare a resolution
placing a measure on the November ballot to ratify and update the
existing Utility Users Tax on telecommunication without increasing
the tax rate, which has been in place for 39 years.
The proposed budget allocates $21 million for capital improvements,
including improvements for the Pier, the Borderline community and
the western segment of Ocean Park Boulevard.
Despite the record budget, the City needs to be cautious, the City
Manager told the council.
“We still have vulnerabilities,” Ewell said. “The
State has not passed a budget yet. We still have a very cooling
economy.
“We feel comfortable with some conservative growth assumptions,”
he said, “but we need to be very prudent.”
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