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Santa Rosa facing major cuts in budget
$10.5 million deficit may mean fewer officers, closing shelter, eliminating all sports programs
Published: Saturday, September 27, 2008 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, September 27, 2008 at 12:47 p.m.
City Hall is raising the specter of a very different Santa Rosa a year from now.
Dead animals left to rot in roads, darkened streets, fewer police officers, poorly maintained parks devoid of athletes, and fire stations with “temporarily closed” signs over firebay doors.
Those are among the impacts by next summer if the City Council approves more than $10.5 million in budget cuts and revenue increases that the city’s financial experts say are needed to balance next year’s budget.
“There are no easy answers. Everyone is going to feel the pain,” said Councilwoman Susan Gorin, a member of the council budget committee. “The community, quite rightly, is not going to like what they are going to see.”
Assistant City Manager Michael Frank, who oversees the budget, said there really is no choice but to make the cuts or face the possibility of becoming the next Vallejo.
Vallejo, a city of 120,000 that was $16 million in debt, recently became the largest California city to file for bankruptcy.
“We’re not close to that happening,” Frank said, “but if we were to take no action, we would have a problem very quickly.”
And the problem, he said, keeps getting worse.
Just four months ago, after the council had slashed $5 million to balance its 2008-09 budget, Frank said the city would need to cut $8 million more — or find off-setting revenues — to balance next year’s budget.
But since that forecast, Frank said the deficit has jumped to $10.5 million.
“We’re having a housing crisis, a credit card crisis and a recession all at the same time,” he said.
Frank said the council is on a tight deadline so that some of the proposed cuts can be implemented as early as Jan. 1.
He said there are so many cost-cutting measures to consider that the council will hold two meetings over the next 60 days to wade through them.
More than 75 budget reductions are scheduled for review Tuesday, along with some revenue-raising proposals.
Among them are closure of the downtown homeless service center and shelter, a 25 percent reduction in pothole patching, elimination of street sweeping, closure of the Bennett Valley Avenue Senior Center, a significant cutting of maintenance at 45 neighborhood parks and closing Steele Lane Community Center to all recreational programs.
Frank said a second list of cuts is scheduled to be discussed Nov. 18. Those 10 proposals include rotating closures of fire stations, cutting 10 police officer positions and elimination of adult and youth sports programs.
Frank said the combination of budget cuts, employee concessions and several revenue-raising ideas would offset the projected deficit.
Dark streets City leaders agree that in the past when the city cut millions, the reductions rarely drew widespread concern because most impacts went largely unseen.
But two department heads — Public Works Director Rick Moshier and Assistant City Manager Marc Richardson, who oversees the Recreation and Parks Department — said the consequences of the new cuts will be highly visible.
“These aren’t just accounting changes,” Moshier said.
Among the jobs proposed to be eliminated is that of a field services worker assigned the task of removing dead animals on city streets.
“We’ll still come out if it’s a large animal, like a deer, because that is a safety issue,” Moshier said.
Smaller animals — dogs, cats, raccoons, squirrels and skunks—will be left behind, in hopes someone is willing to dispose of them, he said.
And the number of animals killed by motorists at night could rise if half the city’s 16,000 street lights are doused to save $400,000 a year in electricity.
“We’ll keep them on at intersections and high pedestrian areas.
Otherwise, they will be off,” Moshier said.
Littered parks Moshier and Richardson said many of the cuts would be felt more deeply in neighborhoods because the city would concentrate its resources on the more heavily traveled streets and community parks because of their higher use.
Richardson, whose recreation department has been the primary target of cost cutting the past several years, calls the newest round of cuts “repugnant.”
The proposals would eliminate adult and youth sports, programs that involve more than 5,000 participants, including 300 softball teams that form the largest program in Northern California.
“There will still be people using our fields, but it will be informal play,” Richardson said.
Maintenance at the city’s 45 smaller neighborhood parks would be cut from three times a week to just once.
“That will have a significant impact. When we are unable to properly maintain them, neighboring property values will reflect that,” Richardson said.
The more than 80 budget cuts are spread across a dozen city departments financed by the general fund, which receives two-thirds of its revenue from two economy-sensitive sources — sales tax revenues and real estate-related fees that include property taxes, development fees and real estate transfer fees.
Jobs at risk More than 75 percent of the city’s general fund operating budget is devoted to employee compensation.
“It’s clear our payroll is an issue,” Frank said.
Sixty jobs are on the chopping block, 44 of them currently filled. The city also has included $1.6 million worth of worker concessions — temporary salary cuts and freezes, reduced work schedules, increased benefit costs to employees — among its budget-balancing proposals.
Frank said gaining employee cooperation might go better than some think.
“There seems to be a willingness to work together,” he said, citing talks with a dozen bargaining groups.
Two already have stepped forward.
Department heads previously agreed to postpone July pay raises to Jan. 1, a savings for the city of $25,000.
The 125-member Santa Rosa Fire Fighters union also has agreed to defer pay raises for up to a year, to July 1, saving the city $550,000 and allowing the department to retain its hazmat team and some jobs.
You can reach Staff Writer Mike McCoy at 521-5276 or mike.mccoy@pressdemocrat.com.
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