Manteca Budget - Next Steps
The state budget is done--at least for a couple of months. Since many of the cuts imposed by the state will actually cost more than they save, and since some of the takings (such as the RDA funds) may be overruled by a judge, there is little doubt the legislature will be back working on the budget again by the first of the year. Even if they make it into 2010 without a problem, they'll be back by April when personal income taxes fall far short of the state's projections--partially because of all the job losses created by the state budget!
In the meantime, we have to finalize the budget for the City of Manteca. As most of you know, we put off adopting a budget until after the state was finished picking our pocket. In addition, we needed to find out how much the assessor would be reducing property values and we wanted to see another quarter of sales tax revenues for Costco, Bass Pro and auto dealers before finalizing revenue projections.
The good news is that our crystal ball was pretty accurate. Other than the major hit on our redevelopment capital fund, our revenues are pretty much what we expected. The bad news is that our revenue is pretty much what we expected. We as a city now face the challenge of providing services in 2009-2010 with revenues similar to 2002-2003. Not only have our labor costs gone up significantly during that time, but we've also added about 13,000 citizens to serve as well. Thus our general fund revenue per citizen is similar to sometime back in the 1990s.
In addition, while I expect revenues to go up someday, the economy doesn't look like it is going to rebound in a big way any time soon. This means property taxes and sales taxes are going to be stagnant--although hopefully they won't continue to drop. But it is likely that our revenues will grow more slowly than our rate of population growth.
So how do we take on this challenge?
With limited resources we have to be sure that we've got our funds focused in the areas most important to the community. Second, we have to ensure that we are continuing to invest in programs and services that promote economic growth, and finally we have to combine our staff resources wherever possible. There can be no duplication or contradiction of efforts. These are not only tasks for today, but tasks we must focus on long term.
In addition, staff has to acknowledge the fact that our compensation has to be in line with our resources. City management and the City Council have spent the last decade ensuring that our salaries were competitive in the marketplace. This allowed us to retain and recruit top flight employees for every position. I can assure you that will continue to provide compensation levels better or equivalent than our peer group cities.
If you've been reading this blog over the past couple months, you'll note that just about every city in the state has asked their employees to help bridge the budget shortfall that nearly EVERY city in the state is facing. To date, our employees have done everything we've asked to help balance the city's budget. However, due to continuing declining revenue, the sacrifices made to date will not be enough to get us through the next fiscal year or two.
We'll be sitting down with all of our employee groups over the next month to see what each group can do to help balance our budget for the next year. The Executive Management team has already committed to come up with a labor cost saving plan from its membership in the next two weeks. Hopefully, we can reach an equitable resolution with the rest of our employees in the next 30 days so that we can present a balanced budget to the City Council by mid-September.
In the meantime, we have to finalize the budget for the City of Manteca. As most of you know, we put off adopting a budget until after the state was finished picking our pocket. In addition, we needed to find out how much the assessor would be reducing property values and we wanted to see another quarter of sales tax revenues for Costco, Bass Pro and auto dealers before finalizing revenue projections.
The good news is that our crystal ball was pretty accurate. Other than the major hit on our redevelopment capital fund, our revenues are pretty much what we expected. The bad news is that our revenue is pretty much what we expected. We as a city now face the challenge of providing services in 2009-2010 with revenues similar to 2002-2003. Not only have our labor costs gone up significantly during that time, but we've also added about 13,000 citizens to serve as well. Thus our general fund revenue per citizen is similar to sometime back in the 1990s.
In addition, while I expect revenues to go up someday, the economy doesn't look like it is going to rebound in a big way any time soon. This means property taxes and sales taxes are going to be stagnant--although hopefully they won't continue to drop. But it is likely that our revenues will grow more slowly than our rate of population growth.
So how do we take on this challenge?
With limited resources we have to be sure that we've got our funds focused in the areas most important to the community. Second, we have to ensure that we are continuing to invest in programs and services that promote economic growth, and finally we have to combine our staff resources wherever possible. There can be no duplication or contradiction of efforts. These are not only tasks for today, but tasks we must focus on long term.
In addition, staff has to acknowledge the fact that our compensation has to be in line with our resources. City management and the City Council have spent the last decade ensuring that our salaries were competitive in the marketplace. This allowed us to retain and recruit top flight employees for every position. I can assure you that will continue to provide compensation levels better or equivalent than our peer group cities.
If you've been reading this blog over the past couple months, you'll note that just about every city in the state has asked their employees to help bridge the budget shortfall that nearly EVERY city in the state is facing. To date, our employees have done everything we've asked to help balance the city's budget. However, due to continuing declining revenue, the sacrifices made to date will not be enough to get us through the next fiscal year or two.
We'll be sitting down with all of our employee groups over the next month to see what each group can do to help balance our budget for the next year. The Executive Management team has already committed to come up with a labor cost saving plan from its membership in the next two weeks. Hopefully, we can reach an equitable resolution with the rest of our employees in the next 30 days so that we can present a balanced budget to the City Council by mid-September.
posted by City Manager @ 6:58 AM
1 Comments:
At August 10, 2009 5:12 PM ,
Bill said...
Steve, IF the City of Manteca budget is so tight why are still spending money for projects?
At the last city council meeting there was some items to pay contractors addiitonal money outside of the original contract. If the contract was underbid then the increse should not have been paid. If the increase was for an icrease scope of work should the contract been reopened?
A contract is a contract if the scope of work stayed the same as the original contract then no additional money should have been allocated, if the scope of work changed; why did it change this is the type of questions that the city council members should be asking instead of just approving more money.
Bill Brewer
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