www.montereycountyweekly.com JUNE 15-21, 2023 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 15 munity services, remain understaffed. Staffing levels at the Salinas Police Department led Chief Roberto Felice in February to announce a new system for prioritizing calls, with “quality-of-life” calls for issues like noise and traffic not generating a response. Police have been directed to work mandatory overtime, which totals some 900 hours a month to keep officers on the streets, and costs roughly $2 million a year. City Council approved a new cash incentive program to recruit more officers. The budget process featured multiple bilingual meetings in Spanish and English to gather community input; streets and sidewalks were a priority for many participants. The Public Works Department, however, is getting the same slice of the pie as it did in previous years, 10 percent; that is up from $11.8 million last year to $13.7 this year. That amount won’t come close to meeting the city’s projected cost for improving the state of its roads citywide, a figure that officials put at a minimum cost of $24 million. Public meetings on the budget took place in person and virtually, and once the budget is approved, City Manager Steve Carrigan says they plan to print copies in Spanish for the first time. Among upcoming projects, the city will be working on the completion of the new Hebbron Resource Center; affordable housing on Laurel Drive and Division Street; adding Lucas CPR (a mechanical chest compression device that increases the chances of saving lives) to all Salinas Fire Department fire engines; designs for a new fire station; and expanded hours at all Salinas Public Library branches. Seaside During the last two years, the city of Seaside “experienced exceptional and unexpected growth,” according to its draft budget. And yet: “The city’s revenue streams have begun to flatten out, while at the same time the city’s costs continue to rise.” Why? Victor Damiani, Seaside’s finance director, attributes it to sales tax revenue from increased consumer spending, the two biggest categories being auto sales and online shopping. All the money pumped into the economy due to federal legislation passed in that time achieved its primary goal—staving off a recession, for now at least—but at the same time all the money floating around has had an unintended consequence: all the money is worth less, i.e. inflation. That’s in part why Seaside’s costs, just like the average consumer, have gone up—everything, including labor, is more expensive. (For the most part, those who provide labor in Monterey County also have to be able to afford to live here.) And as anyone who lives in the area knows, it’s not cheap. And while the pandemic has hurt commercial real estate values in big metro areas, there was an increase in residential real estate values—they “skyrocketed,” Damiani says—which boosted property tax revenue 29.4 percent in the last four years, from $8.5 million in fiscal year 2019-20 to a projected $11 million in the coming fiscal year. An analysis of the situation in the city’s draft budget document projects property tax revenues to flatten in the coming year—just a 4-percent increase—and notes, “with home prices elevated, however, affordable housing remains problematic in the community.” Seaside is not unique in that respect, but there are several housing projects in the hopper that, should they ultimately get built, will add much-needed supply. It’s a bit of a mixed bag as to how that will impact the city’s overall fiscal health: Damiani says that while the biggest of those projects, Campus Town, is expected to add about $4 million annually in net impact to the city’s budget, he points out that the new fire station the city is planning to build near Seaside’s northern border will cost an estimated $16.5 million and, in the near term, add about $1.2 million-$1.8 million to staffing costs. Other costs for the city, he says, are expected to keep rising as well. Seaside’s fiscal future, in the nearterm at least, is rosy—it has a big tax base with auto sales, transient occupancy tax revenue and property taxes—but its challenge will be in whether, as a city government, it can meet the moment in serving the needs of its residents. Monterey The Covid-19 pandemic hit the city of Monterey’s bottom line hard, to the tune of $32 million lost in the first 15 months of the pandemic—mainly because the city depends heavily on transient occupancy taxes collected from hotel guests, Monterey’s biggest revenue source. At the start of the pandemic, the city cut nearly 20 percent of its workforce. That was then—the city is now building itself back up and City Manager Hans Uslar says he’s feeling quite optimistic about Monterey’s future. One reason he’s feeling optimistic is that despite the city’s fiscal challenges they have been able to add money into emergency reserve funds for future economic upsets. In addition, for the first time in the city’s history, they are putting aside funds specifically for maintenance of the Conference Center. He expects a fund for CalPERS will reach $6 million by next year in case of unexpected rises in employer contributions required by the state. That will allow the city to pull from the fund, instead of making cuts elsewhere. The city is still carrying 50 to 60 “[THE AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN IS] ONE OF THE BEST THINGS FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS EVER DONE FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT.”
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