Housing, Transportation, Youth Lead RC Balanced Budget

REDWOOD CITY, CA — The city adopted a balanced budget at Monday night's final City Council meeting of the fiscal year.

The new fiscal year starts July 1.

The budget focuses on the council's top priorities of housing, transportation as well as children and youth, while addressing unfunded liabilities. The account that supports a city's core services, the general fund part of the budget amounts to $157.4 million, which supports most city services including the library, parks and recreation, along with public safety services. The 2019-20 budget for all funds totals $301.6 million in revenues and $290.0 million in expenditures.

"Because the Redwood City School District's has faced difficult challenges, the adopted budget aims to help using one-time funding to help with school site consolidation. This includes supporting safe travel around schools and increased after school programs for children," said Ian Bain, mayor of the city of Redwood City.

In addition to furthering City Council priorities, the budget pays down pension liabilities to save on interest and uses community input shared at a recent community budget workshop to contain costs through efficiencies, innovations and partnerships.

The adopted budget furthers an annual Capital Improvement Program, funding 54 projects requiring $24.8 million as the guiding document outlined infrastructure projects. Capital projects range from supporting parks and public safety to maintaining transportation, water and utilities.

A 10-year general fund forecast was presented with the budget to provide a long-term road map to financial sustainability. The forecast anticipates a future economic downturn in FY 2020-21, and when combined with rising mandated pension contributions, the city projects a budget deficit to begin in FY 2021-22 and increase annually over the next decade.

Housing priorities include:

-Start construction of 20 for-purchase Habitat for Humanity affordable housing units at 612 Jefferson and develop full, affordable housing apartments at 353 Main by fall 2019

-Launch two pilot Housing and Homelessness Innovation Team initiatives by January 2020: a Downtown Streets Team, which will hire homeless residents to help clean and beautify the city with the goal of helping people develop job skills and landing a full-time job; and the Housing Locater Assister, which will assist homeless or at-risk households find affordable housing

-Collaborate with the city's school districts to explore workforce housing opportunities for school district and city employees by February 2020

-Develop a plan by June 2020 to increase the city's overall effectiveness at serving homeless residents and helping them get housing

-Convene an annual meeting with affordable housing development organizations and developers to provide updates on city affordable housing policies and programs and "opportunity zone" benefits by June 2020

Transportation priorities include:

• Kick off the Roosevelt Traffic Calming project and present design options for community input by October 2019 and preferred design alternatives in early 2020
• Increasing parking enforcement staffing by two positions (for a total of four positions) by fall 2019 to address additional neighborhood parking and downtown parking needs and to reclassify two existing parking enforcement officer positions to support abandoned vehicle abatement and traffic safety duties in support of the traffic unit by fall 2019
• Complete construction of the U.S. Highway 101 Pedestrian Under crossing between Bair Island Road and Main Street providing an important pedestrian and bicycle connection from the neighborhoods east of Highway 101 to the downtown area by December 2019
• Advance design of the Whipple Grade Separation project and develop conceptual grade separation alternatives by early 2020 and complete design of US Highway 101/84 Interchange Project by summer 2020
• Coordinate with regional partners throughout the year to further key transportation projects including the Redwood City Ferry Terminal Project, the Dumbarton Transportation Project and the Caltrain Electrification and Modernization Project

Children and Youth priorities include:

• Invest in parks and library infrastructure to expand Redwood City's spaces for children including Hoover Park Turf Project by August 2019, Magical Bridge Playground by December 2019 and temporary pop-up activities like Putt'n Around Mini-golf throughout the year
• Launch new library programs and activities for seniors, veterans, LGBTQ+ residents, people of color, people with disabilities, and opportunity youth (those aged 16-24 who are not currently in school or employed) and work directly with these populations in the development of new programs and library collections that meet their needs by December 2019
• Install the Pirate Ship Imaginative Art Area for children and families at the Redwood Shores Branch Library by the end of 2019 and create a new makerspace/technology lab for people of all ages at the downtown library by April 2020
• Explore a temporary pop-up teen center in the downtown area by spring of 2020
• Conduct a Teen Citizen Police Academy and a Junior Fire Academy by June 2020

The completion of the budget also wraps up the annual auditing process.

The 2019-20 Adopted Budget with the five-year Capital Improvement Program is listed by visiting https://www.redwoodcity.org/financereports.

Other helpful web links are as follows:

• Budget Message
• Budget Message Attachments
• Budget-At-A-Glance
• 10-Year General Fund Forecast
• FY 2018-19 Accomplishments
• FY 2019-2020 Goals
• Department Pages