City Manager: Culver City Budget Needs Expenditure Reductions and Revenue Increases

At Monday night’s City Council meeting, the City’s Chief Financial Officer Jeff Muir provided a brief overview of the City’s proposed fiscal year 2012-2013 budget, and the projections were predictably grim.

With the abolition of State redevelopment agencies on Feb. 1, Muir cited the following figures from the report:

$7.5 million in transfers and reimbursements to the General Fund have been eliminated, which include 24 full-time dedicated positions at $3.3 million, overhead, rent and other reimbursements at $1.3 million, various other positions at $1.7 million, police OT, code enforcement, graffiti removal and engineering services at $1.2 million.

Click on the PDF to the right of this article to read the entire Fiscal Year 2012-2013 Culver City Proposed Budget.

Following Muir’s presentation, City Manager John Nachbar said the City is seeking input and recommendations from the council on how to proceed, given that the City is facing a $7-8 million deficit. 

“This budget recommends the elimination of 19 positions,” Nachbar said. Those positions include the 14 positions from the former Redevelopment Agency

Nachbar said the City has worked hard to also lower compensation costs – hence the 2011 negotiations with the City’s six bargaining groups. Those negotiations, he said, lowered annual expenditures in the General Fund by approximately 3 million a year.

Yet despite the fact that Nachbar said a lot has been done to trim down the budget and that the City could have been facing a $17 million rather than a  $7 million deficit, he added, “It’s inescapable how dramatic of a problem we still have left.”

Nachbar said if the City keeps trying to solve its financial problems primarily through expenditure reductions then services would be reduced dramatically.

Rather, he said, “It’s time to give consideration to revenue increases, some sort of tax increase.”

While stating that it may not be the direction the community wants to go in, Nachbar said it’s the only way to maintain the standard of services Culver City residents have come to expect. To this end, he added, he plans on utilizing the services of a public opinion research firm to gauge the community’s attitude vis-à-vis a revenue or tax increase.

All five City Council members agreed that the community should have the opportunity to discuss proposed solutions. They also agreed that revenue or tax increases were a viable option.

Mayor Andy Weissman noted that everyone understands “we’ve gone beyond the fat,” when it comes to trimming the budget. He stated he’d like to see a return to the Town Hall concept to give residents a chance to weigh in, but only if it went beyond its previous incarnation of “one gigantic gripe session about trash, trees and potholes.”

Meghan Sahli-Wells suggested a sub-committee be formed to look not only at the budget but also at economic development moving forward. However, Weissman said while such a committee might be helpful it wouldn’t prove particularly informative to the community.

Jim Clarke said he believed the best source of new revenues for the city would be a sales tax increase, which could be put on the November ballot. He also took the opportunity to put forward one of his main election platforms of investing in public/private partnerships and to pursue private philanthropy, “to get others to help us and redirect some of our funds to the services we need.”

City Staff and the council will meet again on June 4 and 5 to go over the recommended budget. Nachbar noted that as the proposed budget currently stands it suggests eliminating 19 positions and a total of $2 million in reductions.

“There are no further reductions beyond that at this point,” he said. “But we’re seeking dialogue with the council and the community about how to proceed.”

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