PLEASANTON — Pleasanton residents should soon expect to feel the effects of the city’s multi-million dollar cuts recently solidified by the City Council in the face of a severe budget deficit.
Council last week approved a list of reductions which included cutting back library hours and closing the facility on Sundays, eliminating four city parks maintenance jobs and other positions, such as city crossing guards. In total, the council approved over $12 million in cuts over the next two years, which falls significantly short of the city’s previous target of $10 million the first year and $12 million the following year.
Officials expect an annual deficit of $13 million but it could get as bad as $22 million a year in a recession. The council decided in total to cut $6.2 million through next year and $6.6 million the following year. But officials avoided closing the city’s beloved Dolores Bengston Aquatic Center or Fire Station 1, after dozens of residents pleaded with the city not to at budget hearings last Tuesday and Thursday.
The council will finalize the budget this summer, with possible amendments and additional cuts.
Mayor Jack Balch, in an interview, said he is “optimistic on Pleasanton’s future.” Before he won his council spot in November, he previously said he wished to avoid all the proposed cuts entirely, stating he didn’t believe the financial forecast of the city was as dire a picture as officials had painted. As a local business owner and accountant by trade, he’s since had a change of heart.
“If we want to avoid all of it, I don’t think that’s possible,” Balch said. “As a business leader, I am more concerned that a recession may occur than I had been earlier in the year. And I think it’s prudent to be considering that possibility in our budgeting process.”
The April 10 meeting was a continuation of a marathon seven-hour April 8 budget meeting that stretched to nearly midnight. Councilwoman Julie Testa called the budget discussions “tragic” after the failure of a half-cent sales tax ballot measure in November that officials were betting would prevent many of these cuts.
“I truly wish we weren’t in this situation,” Testa said. “And that is why I supported putting the tax measure on the ballot, because if it had passed we would have the breathing room right now to not be cutting programs that are really important to our community.”
Councilman Craig Eicher, a former Pleasanton interim police chief, protested cutting two campus police officers from city funding and instead asked the city to find a way for the school district to help pay for campus police. Balch, Vice Mayor Jeff Nibert and Councilman Matt Gaidos agreed that the district should help bear the costs of campus police.
As Eicher trumpeted support for foregoing major cuts to the police department, the vice mayor expressed his worries for the financial health of the city.
“Just in general, I’m feeling somewhat dismayed that we aren’t achieving the reductions that we need to achieve for the benefit of the city,” Nibert told council Thursday.
Nibert later in the meeting suggested going back to the voters for a special election to ask for additional revenues. He said it would be “wise” to ask the voters again to approve either a new ballot measure or a bond to pay for large ticket items such as the projected multi-million dollar pool renovation.
“I can almost guarantee that without significant new revenue approval by the voters, what we do now will not be the last of the cuts,” Nibert said. “We are relying on quite a bit of one-time money in this current budget that we’re talking about that will not be there next time.”
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