Friday, Jun. 12, 2009
Budget on course for approval
By Corey Pride
cpride@losbanosenterprise.com
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ReprintLos Baños officials held their third workshop on the proposed 2009-2010 budget Monday afternoon, outlining many of the issues that will be decided at next Wednesday’s City Council meeting.
The city is estimating that it will take in $38.7 million in revenue and have $63.9 million in expenditures. The city’s estimated funds balance for the beginning of the fiscal year is $100.6 million.
“I, spent the last week,looking at every single page, every single item. I also spent the last week talking to city officials from all around areas. I was just happy to know that despite the hardships we’re one of the very few communities anywhere around that are still in the black,” Mayor Tommy Jones said.
The City Council opted to tackle a proposed garbage rate increase seperately from the budget.
Last week consultant Robert Hilton explained that the city will need to increase the utility fee in the future. Reasons for an increase include under-estimation of the contamination level within the city’s recycling program, failure to raise rates by 8 percent last year, a planned rate increase from the Merced County Association of Government’s Joint Powers Authority, and a 2 percent loss in utility customers combined with a need to perform a $6 million clean closure of a defunct landfill near Highway 165.
Jones proposed spreading garbage fee increases out through the course of the next five years. City staff is expected to review a formal proposal on increasing the fee June 17. Chief Financial Officer Melinda Wall said if rates are increased by the council they will not go into effect until December.
The Los Baños Chamber of Commerce continued to implore the city to reinstate its annual contribution. In the 2008-2009 budget the chamber received about $36,000 from the city and Redevelopment Agency. No contribution is being proposed by either entity in the latest budget.
Geneva Brett, who is the current chamber of commerce president, tried to impress upon council members how important the organization is to Los Baños. She recounted a conversation she recently had with the mayor pro tem of Barstow. Brett said she was told Barstow contributes $50,000 to its chamber annually.
“I said how can you manage to do that in these tough economic times? She said, ‘How can we not?’” Brett said. “I do not mean to stand here, by any stretch of the imagination, and say the chamber is more important than a firefighter’s job or a police officers job. But yet at the same time it is business, it is sales tax, that generates the income to provide for those jobs.”
Councilman Joe Sousa said the reality is the city does not have enough money to do all the things that it wishes it could.
“I’ve heard about the chamber for quite some time. If these were normal times there would be no problem whatsoever,” Sousa said. “We’ve cut every youth program, pretty much, that I know of unless it could sustain itself. This budget’s down to the bare bones. I can’t in good conscience tell the children of our community, and other organizations, ‘I can’t give you any money to support your efforts but I’m going to give it to the chamber.’”
Sousa said his comments are not meant to show disrespect toward the chamber of commerce.
The council seems to be on opposite ends of a proposal to upgrade a vacant utilities technician position to an accounting budget supervisor job.
The new title will be a managerial position within the finance department. It will require $29,000 more per year in addition to the salary slated for the utility technician. This week the city revealed that $28,000 of the money will come from the abolishment of a part-time accountant position.
“I’m just a little upset that we have to spend money to safeguard money,” Councilman Mike Villalta said.
Councilman Tom Faria suggested waiting until the results of a forensics audit are available.
“I’m not sure at this time whether it’s premature,” Faria said of hiring an additional manager. “The outside analysis could come in and say ‘Look you guys are doing a great job but this is where it’s slipping. It’s kind of like a pin-pressure system. There may be a pinhole leak in a mile-long pipe... and it may take somebody from the outside to come along and find it.”
Councilwoman Stone said she believes $1,000 a year is worth the extra safeguard. Jones said he’s in favor of hiring an accounting budget supervisor.
“I think that’s the direction we got to go in,” Jones said. “I think we have to look at everything we’re going to talk about doing to make sure we make all the corrections that we need. We got to put that first, to not would be a big mistake.”
City Manager Steve Rath concluded the meeting by reminding the council that foreclosures are expected to increase and planned state takeaways may rise as well.
“The state hasn’t even begun to approach the cuts they have to go to balance their budget. That’s going to have huge impacts on quality of services, not only on the city but the county.”
Enterprise reporter Corey Pride can be reached by phone at (209) 388-6563, or by e-mail at cpride@losbanosenterprise.com