Marina’s Sequester Budget

Well, it’s that time of year again - time for the annual Marina City Budget dance. This year our new City Manager is creating a budget that follows the City Council’s Balanced Budget Resolution of 2012 with all of its flaws. In other words, the Council will be working under its own version of a sequester budget.

Section 4 of the Resolution states: “requires all future proposed balanced budgets shall, if necessary, reduce expenditures of a specific department in a manner that is consistent with the percentage that that specific department has to the total City annual expenditures”.  This means that regardless of the importance of, or damage created by a proportional reduction to a department, the cuts shall be made.

Isn’t this what everyone complains about in Washington, how unfair the sequester budget is to specific departments and how any reasonable budget would consider that some departments can accept larger cuts than others? Why on earth would we as a City want to emulate that?

The bottom line of the proposed budget for the coming year will result in the elimination of 12 currently filled positions, including 6 in the Police Department and 2 in the Fire Department. In addition, there will be some 4,000 hours of reduced on-call Part-time Recreation Department personnel. These cuts fly counter to Measures M & N that you the citizens passed “to preserve funding for general city services, including but not limited to, maintaining firefighters and police officers for adequate emergency response, reducing crime and criminal gang and drug activity, maintaining City streets and parks, senior programs and youth after-school activity…”

So what has become of the some 2.5 million dollars in annual M & N funding in relation to our overall City budget? What is the Council spending these funds on? Where is the focus on new revenues for the City that is promised each year during the budget discussions by this Council? What about the almost 6 million dollars held in reserves?

The resolution also states that the City “consider retaining an adequate General Fund balance while maintaining an adequate level of service”. Just a few years ago we strived as a City to deliver “world class” service to our residents. Today we struggle to deliver adequate service. If this budget is approved as proposed, we will not even deliver that.

So what can we do? First, the City Council can revisit the resolution at the beginning of the budget process and allow the City Manager and our City Executives to make cuts where they feel they can be made. This does not mean that any cuts would not be painful but potentially they would not be catastrophic to any one department.

Next, we as citizens must attend and make our voices heard starting May 23^rd at the first budget session. The City will need to take from our reserves to maintain some levels of service across the board. We need to help the Council understand our priorities and that reductions in police, fire and recreation endangers our community.

Additional consideration needs to be given to the two properties that the City is close to selling that would help our overall budget. The Council needs to consider these funds, as other Councils have in the past, to maintain at least our current service levels.

Finally, the Council will once again look to raise fees for services as a way of bringing in revenue. They will need to consider that those that pay the fees are, in most cases, those that are attempting to benefit the Community (service groups, developers, etc.). Raising the fees has, and will continue to cause these events and projects to go away to the detriment of our community as a whole. The Council must look to economic development to maintain our City services, but we have said that year after year. It also does not help that the Economic Development Department is yet another department slated for more cuts.

More later…