Severe budget struggle down at City Hall

[quote]By Steve Kozachik
CM Ward 6[/quote]

We are facing a real, and severe budget struggle down at City Hall. If we do nothing, our projected deficits in the coming years will exceed $40M. Our options include more reductions in staffing to reduce our costs, and finding ways to increase our revenues. Both of those will have an impact on you in some fashion.

Staffing cuts very often come with reductions in services we provide. When the ‘do more with less’ challenge bosses give workers rings hollow, we are likely going to begin to do less with less. That affects you.

Increases in revenue also have an impact on you. Our money comes from taxes and fees, therefore, it begins on your kitchen table and affects your household. Although there is no magic solution, in order to balance the budget, we will likely need to increase what we take in.

Our City Charter prevents us from raising sales or property taxes above certain levels. Right now we have a Charter Review Committee considering options we might take to you on the November ballot that would authorize changes in those limits. Those Charter options are where the large revenue opportunities are, but the limits do not change without voter approval.

In addition to the Charter options, staff has also suggested we move Code Enforcement and Graffiti abatement into our Environmental Services Department. That would shift about $4M from our General Fund where the deficit is, over to ESD. That Department is funded by the fees you pay for trash collection. You pay that every month on your water bill.

One suggestion offered by staff would be to find that $4M by increasing what’s paid by water or environmental service customers. Below is a chart that shows the possible impacts of the options we’re being asked to consider.

At our last January Council meeting, I raised an objection to this approach. Trash collection and water are essential services. Increasing fees for either or both will have a disparate impact on low and fixed income customers, the vast majority of whom don’t cause us problems from the standpoint of code or graffiti violations. We’d be asking everybody to pay for the sins of the few.

Options we’re going to look into include increasing fines for code violators, and streamlining the process we go through in holding people accountable. We may also increase services you’ll receive if we raise fees. Those options strike me as being more fair than simply hitting everybody with a higher fee because we haven’t been collecting from the people who are driving up the costs.

We’ll see how this conversation evolves as we get deeper into our budget talks. It’s very likely you’ll be voting on some form of Charter changes this fall. Ahead of that though, stay engaged in the discussions about fees. The dollars we recoup from them are much smaller than what may come from Charter revisions, but the money all comes from your pockets. We’re going to have to make changes in order to address our budget deficits. Advocating for what those changes are is where your voice becomes important.