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Palo Alto’s proposed budget, which eliminates 96 positions, raises a host of fees and partially shifts the costs of sidewalk repairs to city residents, could be adopted the City Council tonight (Monday). ( View the agenda)
The $139 million [http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=21808 General Fund budget for fiscal year 2011 seeks to close a projected $7.3 million gap through a combination of layoffs, cost-recovery fees and expense reductions throughout City Hall. If the council votes on it tonight, as scheduled, the action will conclude a long and painful conversation with the community that began in April, when City Manager James Keene first unveiled his long list of cost-savings proposals.
Since then some of the most controversial items on the list — including new fees for entry to Palo Alto’s parks, elimination of funding for school-crossing guards and elimination of the five-officer traffic-enforcement team — have been scrapped. But the budget would still eliminate 58 full-time equivalent positions (44 regular and 14 temporary). Because many of these positions are filled by part-time workers, the cuts would eliminate a total of 96 positions, 44 of which are currently filled.
The proposed budget also includes a largely symbolic 10 percent reduction for members of the council, a reduction that council members will discuss tonight. The council’s four-member Finance Committee proposed the reduction last month, with committee Chair Greg Schmid the only member dissenting.
Each council member gets a $7,200 salary, though mayor and vice-mayor receive about $8,000. The proposed salary cut would save the city about $7,000.
The proposed resolution notes that “over the past year and as part of the proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2011, city departments have made significant budget cuts and some employee groups have had benefit and salary reductions.”
“Although City Council member salaries represent a very small portion of the city’s budget, the City Council wishes to encourage its members to accept salary reductions proportional to those offered by city departments,” the resolution reads.
If the council adopts the committee’s recommendations, the city’s Print and Mail shop services would be contracted out. The Community Services Department would be reorganized to eliminate one division-manager position. Other positions on the chopping block are: a building inspector, a senior planner, a Fire Department hazardous-materials specialist and administrative assistants at various departments in City Hall.
The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave.
Difficult times require difficult decisions. Glad to see that someone is making the decision to reduce city expenses. Hopefully our state gov’t will follow this example.
But we are still giving the Children’s Theatre more than $1 million per year, even though we are facing tough times?
The council is not making the TOUGH decisions yet.
I see the city shuttle bus that runs all day long as a big expense for the city. Many times I see that the bus is empty or nealy empty. Is the city even looking at ridership levels? This expense needs to be addressed and evaluated.
The PA Council is simply tinkering with the budget and ignoring deep structural problems. Until the citizens demand that the Council do a zero base budget which looks closely at every major expenditure, which fully discloses and funds the unfunded pension liabilities and then balances the budget against known revenues the city will continue to be operating in a dream world – as are Menlo Park and Atherton for exactly the same reasons.
And here we all are on yet another thread making the same comments that no one at City Hall will pay any attention to. SO frustrating.
One of the managers was supposed to collect and tally resident input, but that didn’t happen. Big surprise.
As usual, the council is in reactive mode, deciding for or against the 33 cuts proposed by the city manager and his staff. As Peter Carpenter points out, council members should be looking through the entire budget (as some residents have done) and seeing what could be done to save our money.
The Kool-Aid at City Hall must be very potent.
>”Until the citizens demand that the Council do a zero base budget…”
Peter, do you really think it’s possible for residents to “demand” anything?
Councilwoman Hillary Freeman suggested zero-based budgeting back in 2004: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/2004/2004_06_25.budget35mb.shtml
If even a council member couldn’t change the process, how do you think residents can have an impact?
My experience shows that council members are loathe to engage with the public UNLESS you’re patting them on the back and agreeing with them. Anyone who disagrees, criticizes or complains is labeled a disgruntled naysayer.
I’ve had some good email interchanges with a couple of our newer council members. But once I disagreed with them on process, the emails stopped.
But maybe that’s just because civic engagement is no longer one of the top 5 priorities.
“Because many of these positions are filled by part-time workers, the cuts would eliminate a total of 96 positions, 44 of which are currently filled.”
And, since part-time workers aren’t entitled to benefits, this does nothing to deal with the health & pension elephant sitting in the room.
“and partially shifts the costs of sidewalk repairs to city residents…”
Gee, how thoughtful of the city council. Given the neglected state of many Palo Alto sidewalks, it does not look like like the city has been making many repairs recently anyway. They will remember cut taxes and fees in the amount that would have gone for said repairs, right?
@svatoid wrote:
“But we are still giving the Children’s Theatre more than $1 million per year, even though we are facing tough times?”
Did the city every complete the investigation into who made off with all the loot from the Children’s Theatre awhile back? If not, then why? The recovered funds could be put to good use repairing our sidewalks.
My take is that Palo Alto is run by an old boys network, and that needs to stop. We can change things for the better at the ballot box. Isn’t 2010 the year politicians are being taken to task for their nonsense? If you don’t like the way the city government is run, then get rid of the problem. That is why we have elections.
“My experience shows that council members are loathe to engage with the public UNLESS you’re patting them on the back and agreeing with them. Anyone who disagrees, criticizes or complains is labeled a disgruntled naysayer.”
How right you are, Pat. I know that many of the council cambers say they do not read this forum–they think the rhetoric is not polite enough for them (translated from PA speak–they do not like criticism).
That is the problem with Palo Alto politics —any criticism of council members, even if they were to questions each other’s stances during an election campaign, is considered a “personal attack” and is to be discouraged (remember how Mayor Burch gavelled Aram James out of order and Jack Morton called in the police when Mr James criticized Frank Benest?)
“Did the city every complete the investigation into who made off with all the loot from the Children’s Theatre awhile back? If not, then why? The recovered funds could be put to good use repairing our sidewalks.”
Two council members vilified the police and attacked their investigation–obviously that and pressure from the Friends group led to the investigation to be dropped, with the the police lieutenant made the scapegoat. The council then spent two session apologizing to Briggs and her cronies.
7K/year? Why risk to “serve” on the council for such small amount?
What moves a council member? Warm feeling of self-importance? Anyway,
people of Palo Alto, you get what you pay for. You wanna an intelligent person to spend a lot of time really working for you? The price of that in Silicon Valley is much higher than what you pay.
Zero based budgeting would be a good start. Some cudos to the Council for cosidering a cut in pay. Hard job for little reward, especially in these troubled times. Also, unrelated directly to the budget at this stage, the council should not negotiates new contract with the firefiighters union until after the November election. There is no reason to diminish one’s leverage.
Pat asks:”If even a council member couldn’t change the process, how do you think residents can have an impact?”
Over 3000 Menlo Park citizens signed a petition for an election on restricting the city’s ability to continue to give excessive pension benefits. Why not get 10,000 Palo Alto residents to sign a petition demanding a vote on the requirement that the City do zero based budgeting in every fifth year?
>”Why not get 10,000 Palo Alto residents to sign a petition demanding a vote on the requirement that the City do zero based budgeting in every fifth year?”
Peter, I think we’d have to get that on the ballot. But first we’d have to explain to people what zero based budgeting means.
svatoid, Re Children’s Theatre, see Audit: Flaws in Children’s Theatre investigation http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=12525
Count me in as one of the 10 000 ? Palo Alto residents whose signatures are needed to put a petition up demanding real changes in how the City business is run.
While the council is voting on budget cuts, a grant application has been submitted to the VTA for $1.7 million for streetscape improvements (street lights, landscaping, fountain, benches, bike kiosks) for California Ave.
“The city would pay $500,000 as part of a local match the grant requires for the $2.1 million project.” http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/story.php?story_id=13160
Insanity reigns.
Pat
Thanks for this link.
I don’t think council realizes there will be no more demographic data whatsoever now. Cullen should have spelled that out to them.
FYI-CITY COUNCIL NO MORE DEMOGRAPHIC DATA FOR YOU OR FOR US!
“svatoid, Re Children’s Theatre, see Audit: Flaws in Children’s Theatre investigation Web Link”
Pat–while I agree there where problems with the police investigation, it was very clear that there were financial issues and a lack of responsibility by the top people at PACT. I also have no doubt that some of the council members had clear conflicts of interest when they tried to interfere with the investigation. The fact that no charges were filed at the end does not mean our money was not being taken care of properly and that their was a lack of oversight by the city council (as usual when it comes to money)
San Carlos have voted to disband their police dept and either use county or Redwood City. This should be considered.
svatoid: I agree that there was a lot of irresponsible behavior by a lot of city staff. To my knowledge, no accounting procedures have changed since the PACT debacle. And Jack Morton definitely had a conflict of interest.
There is no accountability at City Hall.
Here is the comparison between Palo Alto’s police costs per capita and the cost to San Carlos of their proposed new contract with the Sheriff (and note that under a contractual arrangement the contractor cannot come back to the city in later years to demand more pension fund payments, i.e a true pay-as -you go arrangement):
Palo Alto
As of the census of 2000, there were 58,598
people
23.7 sq miles
Police budget $29M
$494 per capita
San Carlos
The population was 27.238 in 2008
5.93 square miles
Police services via proposed Sheriff’s contract
$6.8 M
$248.62 per capita
At $248.62 per capita Palo Alto’s costs would be about $15 M for a savings of $14 m.