THE FIRST WAVE of budget cuts were announced Thursday at 5 p.m. by City Hall.
Managers proposed 5 percent cuts to every department and on the casualty list are the city's roving fire medic team which has improved emergency response times; the popular Downtown ArtWalks; the children's event "Cowboys, Heroes, and Outlaws"; sidewalk repairs; drainage repairs for the rest of the year and 33 full-time positions including an assistant police chief who will take early retirement. Reductions in services include preventative street maintenance, park maintenance, tree trimming, building inspections, code enforcement, weed clearing, and many other services.
Some of the positions eliminated were vacant posts that had been left open because of the hiring freeze. Eighteen were filled positions.
Setting an example, City Manager Rick Cole agreed to take a 10 percent pay cut and asked the entire staff to do the same. While some negotiations are still in progress, all management has agreed to the slashes in pay.
Our firefighters agreed to put off a planned pension increase for at least a year and the police association agreed to a reduction in leave-time accrual equal to a 5 percent pay cut. Over 80 hours of patrolling will be lost in addition to such areas as records keeping and evidence processing. Two of the vacant positions which were eliminated were patrol positions.
For a complete list of current reductions, go here.
The City Council will be asked to sign off on the proposed reductions with an eye toward the next round of much larger cuts which will be announced in March. The looming budget gap could be as high as $12 million.
Upcoming are "deep cuts in every department, total elimination of many popular services and facilities and significant erosion in the level of almost every other service to our community," Cole wrote in an administrative report. "This alternative also exacts a heavy toll on city staff and the long-term capacity of the organization to provide quality services since it would require significant lay-offs, pay cuts or both."
Needless to say, the mood at City Hall among staff is very somber these days.
ALSO UP FOR Council consideration at a special meeting called for Tuesday at 7 p.m. will be a 1/2-cent sales tax measure which would require just a majority passage. The cities of Oxnard and Port Hueneme recently approved such measures. Of 19 California cities who put such measures to the voters last fall, 15 were able to get them passed.
Current polling done by the City of Ventura indicates the majority of residents would likely support such a measure. Respondents were presented with arguments both for and against the measure as well as information about the 911 fee, which was recently rescinded.
"The vast majority of Ventura voters have a high opinion of the city's performance in providing municipal services," the research firm wrote in an accompanying report, "and they consider maintaining the quality of existing services to be among the most important issues facing the community -- substantially more important than avoiding
local tax increases."
What will complicate any sales tax increase proposal will be proposed plans by the state to do the same. The Assembly has scheduled a floor session for 5 p.m. Saturday to vote on the state budget.
Note that the city-sponsored ArtWalk for April will still proceed and there is talk of an artist group taking it on privately.
Ah Shucks. The firefighters have agreed to delay another pension increase. People are losing homes and jobs and firefighters are willing to delay a pension increase. What is the world coming to? Thank goodness the firefighters are helping our Country out of a depression. I just hope they can survive with a delay in another pension increase.
Isn't this a fallout of the federal government's unwillingness, budget-tightening and "no more earmarks" program? Well, "The One", to dispute my own comment, has already managed to work some of the earmarks into the budget plan which used to be about 700-pages of the stuff farmers shovel everyday.
What about the overall, mostly majority of government officials who claim that this new budget will (originally) not create many jobs...now they tell us, jobs will be created. Listen: Because (some state's) infrastructure engineering for bridges, for instance, need dramatic repairs...and soon...because of the budget program, jobs are going to be created. Okay...short-range only...but they do not tell you that. I question about the long-range retention of jobs; bridge repairs do not last forever...what happens when those jobs in the state are complete? Job-loss, that's what...a vicious circle.
Fast-forward to Ventura County. Marie...how did the County come to initiate these cutbacks? Was the State of California "requested" by the Feds or did California State require to itself, to have all communities and counties re-think their accountability and trim-in all absolute areas? I would like to know how this STARTED! What brought about this cutback fever!
It is good that Ventura County is doing this, in any instance. Fat-trimming is absolutely required to determine just where over-averaging spending is coming from, and how it can be controlled in the future. What is needed is not deficit...we need the opposite in the bank in the account of the County. This is where this program is going. Trim is required and necessary. Live and learn, folks.
John King
Marie:
As the old Chinese proverb says, "..May we all live in interesting times.."
Regardless of the spin put on the results of the recent poll by the polling firm, I have serious doubts that once they know all the details contained in the State budget compromise bill, should it pass, as well as the City of Ventura's proposed Sales Tax increase measure, that a sufficient number of working-class families in the City of Ventura will be willing to support an increase in the local sales tax.
First of all, as any first-year student in political economics will tell you, the Sales Tax is the MOST REGRESSIVE of all the taxes. It DISPROPRTIONATELY impacts the working class, and working poor, since a greater portion of their disposable income, AFTER Federal and State income taxes, is represented by CONSUMABLES subject to the Sales Tax.
Are you listening Marcos Vargas and CAUSE???? Quo Vadis Democratic City Councilmembers Brennan, Fulton, Morehouse and Summers???
Once again, our so-called political leaders, both at the State and City-levels, are asking the working class, and the working poor, to bear a HUGELY DISSPROPORTIONATE share of the burden to balance not only the State budget, but now possibly the City of Ventura's budget...
Check-out the URL above, and see how Republican State Senator Robert Dutton explained his "NO" vote on the State budget compromise yesterday..
Senator Dutton, who is no Left-wing Democrat, offers compelling facts that show an inconvenient political truth. Approval of the State Budget compromise bill would cost the average family of four in the State of California, who make about $40K per year, an ADDITIONAL $1,000 in State taxes and fees next year!!!.
And what’s worse that would be ON TOP of the Federal and State tax burden those folks, are already exposed to. Finally, how are these folks gonna pay those increased taxes if they’ve lost their jobs? You can bet that none of them will qualify for Federal Stimulus Bill payouts or TARP assistance...
And now the City of Ventura wants to ask working-class and working poor voters who live in the city to fork over an additional amount of money that they don't have in order to help the City balance it's own budget... I just don't think that it's gonna happen, regardless of the City's polling firm’s spin in their report..
You know that the political world has turned upside-down when a conservative Republican State Senator representing Rancho Cucamonga argues against the State Sales Tax increase using traditional Democratic Party working-class and economic equity arguments, and the so-called "Democratic and DTS Blue" majority on the Ventura City Council are considering an increase in the most regressive form of taxation to help balance the City's budget...
Frankly, in this civically engaged, voting, and taxpaying citizen's opinion, both the State Legislature and the San Buenaventura City Council and Senior Executive Management, need to back to the fiscal drawing board.
They both should attend closely to Shakespeare's immortal words in "Julius Caesar," adapted of course, to modern times and fiscally trying conditions..
"..The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in insufficient taxes, but rather it lies in those political leaders, both at the State and City level, who, when times were good, refused to tell their key political constituencies no, and spent profligately and unwisely, without socking away sufficient reserves to be self-reliant, at least at a basic sustenance level of core public services, for when times, inevitably, would once again be bad. As they are today.."
Not to mention, arguably poor fiscal stewardship of the City's investment portfolio... But that's another topic for another day..
NostraDemus
If you are truly objecting because it is a regressive tax, which tax would you prefer?
Dinosaurs Rock:
The fiscal priority framework is simple and direct, even if the execution of the budget plan is not without pain and suffering..
The City Manager and his Senior Executive Team should identify optional level of service scenarios, starting from the most basic core City services that are AFFORDABLE with existing revenues, and then rank them in priority order, juxtaposed with optional funding sources.
Then the Council should hold a series of five or six public meetings throughout the City, not just in City Hall in West Ventura, in order to seek public review, comment and input.
Finally, after those community meetings and public meetings, the City Council should do what we elected them to do. Prioritize the needs, within the limits of existing reliable City revenues, and adopt a budget, which includes a sufficient reserve contribution for unforeseen emergency conditions, that meets those basic needs. No more, nor less... There is no doubt that none of us will be happy with that budget, but so be it.. We have no choice...
Until the overall national and State economy improves, people go back to work, businesses begin to flourish, and the real estate and other financial markets regain confidence to grow wealth rather than contract it, it is imperative that both the City Council and the State Legislature hold the spending line.
As such time as the National and State economy rebounds, then the Council, working transparently and collaboratively with Senior Executive Management, all City staff, Ventura's businesses, and all of the City's citizens and affected stakeholders, can begin to fund programs, in reverse order of priority list adopted in tough budget times.
This is what all successful households and businesses have to do during lean times, and successful governments MUST do as well..
NostraDemus
BTW: Given your cyber nom-de-plume, do you prefer the Triassic, Jurassic, or Cretaceous periods of Pre-History?
1. Why bother complaining about this specific tax when you are against any new or higher tax in Ventura?
2. RAWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
Dinosaurs Rocks:
First of all I'm not complaining, I'm giving my opinion on these political issues, passionately.
Second, with apologies to Howard Dean, I am grounded in the working class wing of the Democratic Party.
And as a working class Democrat, I don't mind paying my fair share of taxes, but I'll be dammed if I'm going to sit-by and rollover as non-elected bureaucratic elites, either here in Ventura or in Sacramento, try to balance their budgets disproportionately on the backs of hard-working people, regardless of their party registration.
Third, to say the least, I find it hugely hypocritical, that so many Democratic politicians are so-quick to approve increases in regressive sales and other taxes and fees, which disproportionately and adversely impact the working class, working poor and those amongst us who can least afford such taxes and fees.
Yet at the same time those Democratic politicans lack both the political will and skill to figure out a way to round up a sufficient number of Republican votes to support a workable State budget without preserving and in some cases proliferating State corporate tax give-aways to their Hollywood move business and Silicon Valley computer company elites and funders of their political campaigns.
Where's Willie Brown when we need him? Now there was a Democratic Speaker who knew how to bargin and compromise with the Republicans and gain a sufficient number of their votes to pass a State budget without sacrificing core Democratic values and principles, and disproportionately harming the least amongst us...
NostraDemus
1. Would you support a local tax increase if it wasn't regressive? Would you support higher taxes in Sacramento if they weren't regressive?
2. RAWRRRRRR!!!
ND,
The first round of cuts the city is doing bypassed the Budgeting for Outcomes team model they normally use to make these decisions. With the second round of cuts, which I am told will be four-fold in impact, they will be using the BFO model.
Also, I think one criticism of the polling they did on the tax was that it did not account for the possibility that the state could beat them to the tax punch.
I personally don't mind paying it because I know how devastating it will be to this community if we don't have the revenue it will bring in.
Dinosaurs Rocks:
It depends..
First I'd have to see the Budgeting for Outcomes model results for the particular service. Then I'd hope that the City staff would have aligned level of service options with available revenues options. Finally, it would depend on which tax or fee, and how much, was chosen to fund the particular city service(s).
Marie:
In my view, it was a serious error in managerial economics for Rick Cole and the City's Senior Executive Management staff to have bypassed the BFO model for the first round of cuts.
The moment that City staff strays from a tried and true BFO process, they subject themselves to the charge that City Council political preferences, rather than objective performance outcomes analysis, drive the staff's initial budget cutting recommendations..
As you have stated in a number of other posts, there is a direct correlation between the willingness of voters to approve local tax and/or fee increases, if (and this is the proverbial big if) they see a discrete cause and effect relationship between the proposed increase in fees and the performance measures proposed to ensure that those fees are efficaciously and efficiently spent.
Finally, I agree with your observation about the City's polling firm's results being OBE (that's overcome by events) associated with the State's budget compromise plan reliance on a 1-cent increase in the sales tax..
I recognize your willingness to pay the extra sales tax in support of city services. But as for me, well as they say, "..I'm from Missouri; y'all will just have to show me the facts.."
Ciao Commendatori and Commendatora
NostraDemus
Shucks, what's your beef w/ the brave, hard working firefighters ? Huh ?! They could have fought the proposed pension "put off", but at least they are doing something & like I told another Poster many times, I, & you should not have any issues w/ our firefighters & law enforcement employees as they actually make a positive
So just what is your beef ?!