City of Santa Barbara budget hearings underway
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) During a public hearing Santa Barbara City Councilmembers heard a presentation from General Fund Department staff about proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget.
"The whole budget for city of Santa Barbara in Fiscal year 2027 is over $750 million dollars 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 such as police, fire, parks and recreation, and the library.
City Administrator Kelly McAdoo agree 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 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 dollars," said McAdoo.
Departments offered up some temporary solutions to stem the tide of the budget deficit to allow the city to think through some long term solutions.
"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, many of those options were one time, a lot of them were included holding some positions vacant," said DiMartini.
The goal is to minimize the impact to the community and to tourism that helps raise revenue.
Instead of relying on tax revenues departments projected ways to leverage other funding sources from Federal and State sources or 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 and looking forward for years to come, " said DiMartini.
The 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 week.
Those are fully funded by their own operations.
Enterprise funds include the airport, the waterfront, wastewater, clean energy program, and the golf course.
The council is expectedd to vote on the FY 2027 buggdet
Your News Channel will have more on the budget hearings tonight on the news.
