PD Editorial: A tale of two budgets

For local government in Sonoma County, it is the worst of times.

The best of times, to stick with our Dickensian analogy, are but a distant memory and a prayer for the future.

There are no easy choices as a continuing decline in property and sales tax revenue means that more money must be taken from programs already reeling from several years of budget cuts. The toll is obvious to anyone who has dodged potholes on local streets or been disappointed by dry drinking fountains and shaggy lawns at local parks. The lines forming daily for food stamps remind us that more people qualify for help in those times when governments has the fewest resources.

How the next round of budget cuts is apportioned will tell us a great deal about how our elected leaders perceive our community's needs and the public's priorities.

On June 13, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors opens two weeks of hearings on a proposed budget that would cut 16 percent from public safety agencies and 20 percent to 25 percent from other agencies to help close a $42 million deficit.

Among other things, county Administrator Veronica Ferguson's plan grounds the sheriff's helicopter, closes a probation camp for delinquent girls and eliminates the jobs of four prosecutors. It also scales back veterans services and road repairs, cuts funding for school crossing guards and abolishes the Human Services Commission, taking $588,000 the panel was to hand out this coming fiscal year to 26 community groups serving the needy.

Santa Rosa City Manager Kathy Millison also presented a plan that called for shared sacrifice, most notably closing a fire station, eliminating a handful of unfilled jobs at the Police Department and imposing a $5 parking fee at Howarth Park.

A majority of the City Council balked at cutting the police and fire departments, calling instead of more cuts to other city services, including possible layoffs and $1 million in concessions from non-safety workers to help cover raises for firefighters.

The council's approach fulfills our fear, expressed last fall, that Measure P, a quarter-cent sales tax increase on the November ballot, would relieve pressure to address rapidly escalating compensation costs, especially retirement expenses for public safety workers.

In assessing the city's finances two months ago, Millison bluntly said, "It's not going to go back to the way it was."

With public safety spending approaching two-thirds of the city budget, compared to about 44 percent in 1995, insisting on an arbitrary funding level based on past practices isn't creative leadership. We'd prefer to see the council exploring what is necessary to protect residents and asking whether some public safety services, while desirable, are no longer affordable.

The same test - what's needed for a safe, well-rounded community and what's a luxury - could be applied to other programs as well, by both the council and the Board of Supervisors.