CORRECTION: June 8, 2011
Due to inaccurate information provided by the city, an article that ran on Sunday June 5, 2011, misstated the amount Santa Rosa would save if firefighters gave up deferred raises amounting to 6 percent of salary. It would be $1.2 million.
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Santa Rosa voters last fall passed a quarter-percent sales tax to protect "vital city services" from being gutted.
In just over a week, they'll see if they're getting what they paid for.
The budget debate gripping City Hall for the past several weeks culminates with three days of hearings beginning June 14 that will determine how the $6.5 million in new sales taxes will be spent.
So far, the council majority has made it clear that public safety is their highest priority, moving to restore proposed cuts to the police, fire and gang-prevention budgets.
Councilman John Sawyer has said the council has an "obligation to try as much as we can to maintain and enhance" police and fire services because voters have twice expressed strong support for those services.
But other council members have questioned whether that really was what voters had in mind last fall, suggesting that Measure P was as much about potholes, parks and pools as it was about public safety.
"Measure P didn't stand for &‘pensions,'" said councilman Gary Wysocky.
These differing views are shaping up to dominate the political debate of a contentious budget season that could continue a trend in which police and fire are taking an ever-larger share of city spending. The two departments now account for almost 60 percent of the city's general fund.
Even with the infusion of extra cash, the city still faces long-term financial challenges, and voters may not get all they were promised in Measure P for some time.
Measure P is the eight-year, quarter-percent sales tax that voters passed Nov. 2. It was estimated to raise $6.2 million for general city services, but slowly improving sales tax revenue has bumped that estimate up to $6.5 million.
Fifty-seven percent of the voters endorsed the measure, pushing the city's sales tax rate to 9.5 percent. Because it is a general sales tax, which only needed 50 percent of the vote as opposed to two-thirds for a dedicated tax, the council can use the money any way it chooses.
The ballot language said it was "to help maintain essential City services including police and fire protection; violent and gang-crime prevention; pedestrian safety; property and nuisance related crime prevention; street paving and pothole repair; park safety; and recreation and youth programs ... "
The ballot argument in favor of the measure noted it would avoid various "draconian" cuts and "restore badly needed services."
The added revenue is helping soften the city's budget woes. Next year's proposed $116.7 general fund budget is $7.8 million larger than this year's, a 7 percent difference.
Police and fire budgets are kept largely flat. Gang-prevention services get a boost. And pools and senior centers will be spared closure.
"It's making a difference," said Public Works Director Rick Moshier, whose department faces losing three positions instead of as many as 20. "If I cut 20 more positions, it's hard for me to even imagine. That would be gruesome."
Yet, because of a host of other rising costs – including $2.9 million for employee pensions and $1.2 million for health care benefits - voters won't be getting everything mentioned in the Measure P language and ballot argument.
One of the "draconian cuts" the ballot language said the measure would "help prevent" was the imposition of park fees, namely the $5 daily parking fee proposed at Howarth Park. Another promise was to "restore badly needed services" in departments that had been cut deeply in previous years.
Next year's budget, however, does neither.
It calls for further cuts to most departments and doesn't prevent the Howarth Park parking fee, something Wysocky has called a "bait and switch" on voters.
City Manager Kathy Millison acknowledges that voters won't be getting all the services they were promised in Measure P next year.
"It's preserving some of them, but not all of them," Millison said.
Millison's first budget, presented in April, called for $4 million in cuts spread across the city departments to offset the $8.8 million in cost increases the city faced just from "standing still," she said.
She spread the cuts across city departments in proportion to the amount each department is contributing to the deficit.
"I offered a draft budget that kind of shared the pain," she said.
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