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April 24, 2008
Tough Decisions
The City’s Finance Committee continues to grapple with potential budget cuts.
As I’ve written before, I support an across-the-board reduction in all City departments as City Manager Dave Burkland recommends.
Since police and fire departments represent the biggest share of General Fund personnel and operating costs, a 7.5% across-the-board cut represents the largest absolute dollar budget reduction.
It’s not an easy decision, but if police and/or fire department reductions are lessened – and for a good reason since public safety is paramount in the public eye – then bigger cuts must be made in other City departments to make up the difference.
There's a big trade-off in every budget reduction decision.
City Councilor Scott Gruendl was quoted in the E-R saying:
"None of this has been easy and I don't really enjoy being in a position where I'm pitting one department against another ... I don't think we will come out the other end happy.”
Come on Scott, enjoy it! Life is fun.
Okay, making budget cuts is really no fun. Ask the Chico Unified School District Board of Trustees, who also recently made some very painful preliminary budget cuts.
Gruendl is correct about "pitting one department against another." Or more specifically, pitting non-public safety departments against public safety departments.
The non-public safety City departments, which have significantly smaller General Fund operating budgets than police and fire departments, will need to make up the difference in absolute budget dollars by likely making 15% or more reductions in their budgets.
That’s likely what happens if the City Council does not implement an across-the-board cut to all City departments.
Today's Scrabble word is scabble, or to shape roughly.
Posted by dan_nt at April 24, 2008 09:02 AM