Sacramento city leaders say they are facing a $66.2 million budget deficit and will have to make difficult decisions in the coming months to balance the city’s budget.
City officials discussed the shortfall during a Sacramento City Council meeting Tuesday as they began reviewing potential ways to close the gap before the city’s budget deadline in June.
“This year we’re going to have to make some tough choices,” Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty said.
McCarty said the council meeting was intended to present possible options for addressing the deficit as city leaders begin weighing how to minimize the impact on residents.
“Today’s hearing was really about laying out all the options — the good, the bad and the ugly — and we’ll spend the next few months zeroing down a plan that has the least amount of negative impact on our residents,” McCarty said.
City finance officials say the deficit is a structural problem, meaning city expenses are growing faster than revenue.
To help address the gap, finance staff presented several budget scenarios for council members to consider.
One scenario would fully fund priority areas such as public safety and emergency response but would require significant reductions in other city departments.
Another scenario would reduce funding across all city departments by about 12 percent.
“In this scenario, police and fire would have the biggest reduction target. Police almost $29 million, fire over $18 million,” Finance Director Pete Coletto said.
Coletto said those reductions could lead to significant changes to public safety services.
“For public safety there would be some pretty severe impacts. We’d be eliminating traffic enforcement, the Internet Crimes Against Children team, reducing burglary and robbery units, the pop teams,” he said.
A third scenario would require every city department to identify potential spending reductions.
“We asked every department to give us a 15 percent reduction plan,” Coletto said. “So if I’m not spending out my travel budget, I’d rather just reduce that than lay off a firefighter,” he said as an example.
McCarty said city leaders are also looking at ways to generate additional revenue, including possible increases to city and parking fees.
“I think people have seen scenarios we’re increasing our fees, our parking fees, closing swimming pools, laying off police and fire personnel, shuttering some of our successful homeless programs,” McCarty said. “We don’t have to do any of those, and so we’re looking at all those pieces.”
McCarty said protecting core services will remain a priority as the city reviews its options.
“Public safety — police and fire — are top priorities in keeping communities safe,” he said.
Despite the difficult choices ahead, the mayor said city leaders are required to pass a balanced budget.
“Every decision on this list is a bad one. They’re all brutal and none of this is easy — but we have to balance our budget,” McCarty said.
City officials will continue reviewing budget options in the coming weeks before adopting a final spending plan in June.
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