A $21 million budget deficit may force Santa Maria to make ‘drastic’ cuts to services
SANTA MARIA, Calif. - A $21 million budget deficit may result in significant reductions to services in the City of Santa Maria.
During a City Council meeting this week, a staff report indicated cuts may have to take place in order to help the city navigate through the difficult financial times.
"We don't have sufficient revenues to pay for the services that we provide, and so we're certainly in a budget reduction mode," said Santa Maria Assistant City Manager Chuen Wu. "It's a combination to bridge that gap, the gap between revenues and expenditures, and that may include keeping vacancies open and/or reductions to programs."
Wu, who will become Acting City Manager on Monday, and will serve in the roll until recently hired David Rowlands takes over the position at the end of November, added reductions will be required throughout all city departments.
"We're asking every department to look at their operations and see how we can provide services with reduced costs," said Wu. "We identified three tiers, three tiers of budget reductions. In Tier One and Tier Two are reductions that are not public safety related, so all the departments other than police and fire, they were asked to look at their department budgets, and each department did did come up with a proposal largely reflecting, I think, keeping positions vacant and also some reductions to their programs, the Tier Three cuts, which I think the cuts that really begin to impact the city could include personnel reductions."
According to the staff report, the reduction target for all of the departments combined is $16.7 million.
A table below provided in the staff report indicated the dollar amount in cuts needed by department in order to achieve the reduction goal.
Most notably, police and fire have the biggest targeted reductions, with the police department at $7,649,896 and fire department at $3,347,740.
"Police and fire, we know those are issues that communities really care about," said Wu. "We're sensitive to that, and so and we keep that as a Tier Three reduction, but even with police and fire, we're asking them, what what can we do now to achieve some savings? Many of the costs is personnel related, and this is for other departments, it's really, keeping those positions open or when somebody leaves, the organization or retires and keeping that open."
To also help bridge the financial gap, the city is also looking at ways to increase revenues, which may potentially include a number of what city staff described as, "revenue enhanced options".
Some of the ideas floated by staff included an increase in the local sales tax or the transient occupancy tax (hotel tax), cannabis tax, expanding Landscape Districts, parking fees, fire medical response fee, and several other options.
"I do think this time around the budget deficit is severe and it's it's not a situation in which somehow through salary savings we even out," said Wu. "I think that the gap is significant, and this will take some drastic measures, but also note that the city will always try to provide the best service to the community and that's first and foremost."
