{"id":203570,"date":"2026-03-04T07:48:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T07:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/203570\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T07:48:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T07:48:16","slug":"sacramento-mayor-warns-of-brutal-choices-as-city-faces-66-2m-deficit-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/203570\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacramento mayor warns of \u2018brutal\u2019 choices as city faces $66.2M deficit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sacramento<\/a> 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\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s budget deadline in June.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year we\u2019re going to have to make some tough choices,\u201d Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s hearing was really about laying out all the options \u2014 the good, the bad and the ugly \u2014 and we\u2019ll spend the next few months zeroing down a plan that has the least amount of negative impact on our residents,\u201d McCarty said.<\/p>\n

City finance officials say the deficit is a structural problem, meaning city expenses are growing faster than revenue.<\/p>\n

To help address the gap, finance staff presented several budget scenarios for council members to consider.<\/p>\n

One scenario would fully fund priority areas such as public safety and emergency response but would require significant reductions in other city departments.<\/p>\n

Another scenario would reduce funding across all city departments by about 12 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this scenario, police and fire would have the biggest reduction target. Police almost $29 million, fire over $18 million,\u201d Finance Director Pete Coletto said.<\/p>\n

Coletto said those reductions could lead to significant changes to public safety services.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor public safety there would be some pretty severe impacts. We\u2019d be eliminating traffic enforcement, the Internet Crimes Against Children team, reducing burglary and robbery units, the pop teams,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A third scenario would require every city department to identify potential spending reductions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe asked every department to give us a 15 percent reduction plan,\u201d Coletto said. \u201cSo if I\u2019m not spending out my travel budget, I\u2019d rather just reduce that than lay off a firefighter,\u201d he said as an example.<\/p>\n

McCarty said city leaders are also looking at ways to generate additional revenue, including possible increases to city and parking fees.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people have seen scenarios we\u2019re increasing our fees, our parking fees, closing swimming pools, laying off police and fire personnel, shuttering some of our successful homeless programs,\u201d McCarty said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have to do any of those, and so we\u2019re looking at all those pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCarty said protecting core services will remain a priority as the city reviews its options.<\/p>\n

\u201cPublic safety \u2014 police and fire \u2014 are top priorities in keeping communities safe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Despite the difficult choices ahead, the mayor said city leaders are required to pass a balanced budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery decision on this list is a bad one. They\u2019re all brutal and none of this is easy \u2014 but we have to balance our budget,\u201d McCarty said.<\/p>\n

City officials will continue reviewing budget options in the coming weeks before adopting a final spending plan in June.<\/p>\n

WATCH MORE ON ABC10 |\u00a0Sacramento homelessness bill moves forward despite county opposition<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sacramento city leaders say they are facing a $66.2 million budget deficit and will have to make difficult…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[16476,94343,30894,7934,13130,121,15950,123,122],"class_list":{"0":"post-203570","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento","8":"tag-budget-deficit","9":"tag-city-department","10":"tag-city-departments","11":"tag-city-leaders","12":"tag-kevin-mccarty","13":"tag-sacramento","14":"tag-sacramento-city-council","15":"tag-sacramento-headlines","16":"tag-sacramento-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}