Santa Barbara budget hearing focuses on General Fund Departments

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) Santa Barbara City Councilmembers heard a presentation from General Fund Departments about their proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budgets.

"The whole budget for city of Santa Barbara in Fiscal year 2027 is over $750 million approximately," said City of Santa Barbara Finance Director Keith DiMartini.

About $250 million of that comes from the General Fund budget that is funded through taxes.

Those taxes fund essential services including police, fire, parks and recreation, and the library.

City Administrator Kelly McAdoo said the city still has work to do.

"Obviously the city is facing pretty significant challenges, we have done a lot of work going through the budget," said McAdoo, " Each department has really worked hard to reduce expenses to look at ways to reduce out deficit from about $14 million, we are still at about $3.5 million."

Departments offered temporary solutions to the budget deficit until long term solutions are found.

"We did a lot of sort of creative things, looking at ways that we can control our expenses and also ways of generating additional revenue from our existing revenue sources," said DiMartini.

Options included holding some positions vacant.

The goal is to minimize the impact to the community and to tourism that helps raise revenue.

Departments projected ways to leverage other funding sources from Federal and State sources and grants.

They also considered putting some capitol projects on the back burner for at least a year.

"It is a challenging budget season, we have a lot of creative ideas that we are implementing, this isn't going to solve all of our budget problems or challenges in the city, but we have a lot more work to do, but I am hopeful that we will make some good decisions through this process, " said DiMartini.

One public comment urged the council to continue to fund services for the unhoused.

Mayor Randy Rowse called the budget "precarious" and agreed with Councilmember Meagan Harmon who shared concerns about depleting reserves.

An Enterprise Fund Public Hearing will be held next Tuesday.

They are fully funded by their own operations.

Enterprise funds include; the airport, the waterfront, wastewater, the clean energy program, and the golf course.

The council is expected to vote on a final FY 2027 budget.

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