Finances to take center stage at Petaluma government workshop

Finding ways to pay for everything Petaluma residents say they want - repaired potholes, repaved streets, police in schools, well-maintained parks, traffic fixes to ease congestion - will be tops on the mind of City Council members as they meet Saturday to set goals for the next two years.

The daylong session at the Petaluma Community Center is open to the public and the council will hear public comment at the beginning of the meeting at 8:30 a.m. Senior city staffers and managers will be present to answer council members’ questions and provide input.

“A lot of these goals have to do with identifying funding sources,” City Manager John Brown said. “We will have to perform a real evaluation of our expenses and our revenues with an eye toward prioritizing what we have money to do.”

Finances, typically, are of primary concern.

But they may be even more crucial now that Measure Q, the one-percent sales tax increase measure, failed in the November election. Many on the seven-member council had pinned high hopes to having an additional $10 million a year in revenue that could pay for street repairs, sidewalk updates and a laundry list of other priorities the council had lined up.

“We need to have a new funding source,” said newly re-elected Councilman Chris Albertson, who campaigned for the tax increase.

“Measure Q was going to be the salvation, and it died. … We need to put something back on the ballot. And if we do, we need to talk about what it will look like and when it will occur.”

Without that revenue stream, which managers had planned to leverage for bonding and other funding for large-scale programs, budget decisions just got more difficult.

“Where are we going to have to cut in order to spend somewhere else?” Brown said

Brown said that discussion will dovetail into the five-year financial forecast, which the city began creating a few years ago to give city leaders a longer-term outlook for planning.

Other business to be discussed will include zoning and planning, specifically for the central part of town, and attracting and retaining businesses to build the tax base.

Included in that will be a discussion about the future of the fairgrounds. The 60 acres of land is owned by the city but leased to the state for $1 a year and managed by the state-appointed Fair Board.

City and fair leaders have been discussing behind closed doors options for better use of the prime city land.

Ideas being knocked around include developing part of the land with some kind of revenue-generator for the city, like a hotel, conference center or athletic complex.

Also on the agenda Saturday is maintaining or expanding Petaluma’s services, a huge category that includes keeping street lights lit, supporting flood-control efforts, funding fire stations that meet seismic standards, increasing police and fire staffing and expanding public transit.

The meeting is scheduled to run until 4:30 p.m.

You can reach Lori A. Carter at 521-5470 or lori.carter@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @loriacarter.