San Leandro Budget Facts

I appreciate the detail presented in the City Manager's budget overview (a copy of which is attached as a PDF). 

Unfortunately, all it took me was until slide 3 of San Leandro's Financial Overview to start noticing some misdirection, where the "decline in assessed property values" was bemoaned, clearly looking to gin up support for hiking taxes (and of course making "temporary" taxes like Measure Z permanent).

While it is true property tax revenue has declined from its peak, you might be surprised to find out that property tax revenue has increased slightly from 2006-2007.  Sales Tax?  Down about 2% over the same time, largely offset by Measure Z, the recent sales tax hike. 

The real difference in revenues over the past 6 years (and the source of about 90% of the decline in tax revenues) has come from the "Other Revenue" category--permit fees, business licenses, property forfeitures etc. 

Far be it from me to question the wisdom of our appointed City Managers and their past actions, but funding current operations with those inherently volatile revenues seems to be akin to counting on your Christmas bonus to pay for groceries at the end of the year. 

To me this speaks to the wisdom of cutting permit and business license fees to not only remove this temptation, but also to encourage building and business activity in our city.

Now, where is all that money going? 

Not surprisingly, again, to police and fire. In fact, every department in the city (except engineering and transportation) saw a pretty significant budget cut over the past half-decade. Police spending, however, is up 5%, and fire is up 12%.

As Mayor Stephen Cassidy has noted, despite these lopsided spending allocations, the budget would be largely if not entirely balanced by employees contributing their share of their pension costs.

I would also be interested in asking whether the city competitively shops its health insurance, as those costs are up 30% or nearly $800,000 just in the past 4 years.  In the state of Wisconsin, once municipalities were able to shop outside of union-provided policies, many districts balanced their budgets, and the public employees even had the same coverage--the policies just cost less.

After we taxpayers have seen our housing values decline (but property taxes increase), after we're paying more to the city for every transaction taking place in our shops, after we've seen the quality of roads and services decline, I think it's time that sacrifice is indeed shared.

Shouldn't public employees pay their portion of their pensions at the very least?

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