Back in August 2008 I reviewed the city budget on a line item by line item analysis. I provided the City Treasurer a copy of my analysis and possible solutions to what I considered a fat budget that could be trimmed as we head into uncertain times. I also provided this information to Councilmember Debbie Franklin, since she was on the budget ad-hoc committee for her to follow up with the Finance Director of the city.

Debbie met with Ms. Johnson, who provided approximately 6 pages of this primarily tied to MOU’s (Memos of Understanding) with our labor bargaining groups and Federal, State or County agencies that appropriate money to the city for a variety of programs. Outside of that is the money we applied to the Morongo Tribe of Mission Indians to cover the third firefighter and paramedic costs, along with upgrading our police equipment and special tactical units. Council members Botts and Hannah then requested this information for their own review.

You may remember one councilmember stated in the record gazette, in her opinion, after review, that the budget could not be cut without affecting Public Safety and services provided to our residents. I suggested cuts of non-personnel line items that could easily be 5% and with a little work could be 10%. If this would have been considered in August 2008, we would quite possibly not be talking about furloughs or lay-offs to our staff now.

The staff received direction from the council in December to analyze where cuts could be made to the 2008/2009 budget. Cuts were made by 5% with a total staff agreement of no effect on services provided. Another round of cuts was recently approved by the council to drop another 5% approximately with literally no reduction in services. You will see that I voted along with the mayor against the “golden handshake,” allowing eligible staff to retire early. To this date, 4/14/09 we still are not told what this will save the city, if anything. We do lose very key employees that have signed on to accept the golden handshake.

Fiscal Responsibility