Public Hearing to Be Held Monday Night on City Budget

Monday night's City Council meeting is expected to be a heavy hitter.

Not only will there be a public hearing in advance of a vote on the 2011-12 city budget, the council is expected to decide on the next step in the process of developing the vacant lot at 9300 Culver Blvd., also known as Parcel B.

The proposed budget for fiscal year 2011-12, which begins July 1, features a 2 percent across-the-board cut for most city departments. Most of the cuts would be made by eliminating jobs in which the employee has already quit or retired, or would soon do so.

According to city budget documents, the City Council is not slated to have enhancements or reductions. The city manager’s office would be eliminating the general fund’s contribution to its federal advocacy contract, as well receiving slight knocks to its travel and office supply expenses.

The three biggest cuts to the city’s expenditures would be the fire department's $231,378 reduction, public works' $314,490 and the police department's $523,258.

The fire department is slated to lose one fire captain/training officer position, a community services officer and would also “downgrade” a firefighter/paramedic position to a firefighter. The public works department is slated to see reductions in overtime, part-time salaries, contractual services and the loss of one full-time maintenance worker. And the police department has proposed eliminating its Juvenile Diversion program, one vacant police officer position and one vacant safety services communications officer.

Click here to see a chart of the proposed reductions, pgs. 1-9.

“We were asked to make budget cuts at 2 percent of our total amount. Our goal when we make these cuts is to make the least impact on the services we perform for the public, which is patrol,” Capt. Dave Tankenson of the Culver City Police Department said in an interview with Patch. “That is the backbone of any police department.

“Our goal was to not have anybody who works in this building to lose their job.”

Battalion Chief Bill Bischoff of the Culver City Fire Department and Public Works Director Charles Herbertson were unable to be reached for comment on the budget.

The budget figures are also based on the assumption that the city will be able to negotiate further concessions from employee groups, including reduced benefits for new hires and employees paying for more of their retirement contributions. The union for the City Hall employees, the Culver City Management Group, has already agreed to the concessions.

Even so, as stated in the overview of the budget document (available here), there remains a $2.8 million gap that is expected to be covered by the city's reserves.

"Further reductions in the proposed expenditure budget to close the gap would have required service reductions and layoffs," reads the document signed by City Manager John Nachbar and Chief Financial Officer Jeff Muir.

The reasons for the deficit are part of two ongoing issues, as Muir has noted in past interviews with Patch, as well as is noted in the budget document. One is the continued negative effect of the recession and an economy that is not recovering as quickly as could be hoped. As a result, revenue from sales and hotel taxes is not growing enough to cover the gap in expenditures.

The other reason is that the city is taking steps to cover payments for future medical benefits provided to city employees. (Read more about those  here.) The current system of paying as the costs are incurred threatens to leave the city in dire financial straits as costs increase as time goes on. Also creating stress on the budget are the increased contributions required by the California Public Employees' Retirement System, which is still recovering from the stock market crash in 2009.

The budget also suggests in two places that raising taxes might be necessary if residents are to continue receiving services provided by the city.

"The time to have a frank conversation with our citizens about increasing tax revenues in some form to preserve the level of service this community values may be upon us," the budget overview reads.

Although budget concerns will be a major part of the meeting, another significant step toward developing Parcel B is also on the agenda. The city sent out a Request for Qualifications earlier this year to various potential developers, and the Redevelopment Agency has selected what it determines as three qualified candidates. The Redevelopment Agency now wants to send a Request for Proposals to the chosen developers.

The council will decide tonight whether to direct the agency to do so.

Culver City Patch editor Winter Johnson contributed to this report. Click to see tonight's City Council agenda.