It's just a fact: news and features work for the most part (I don't write for National Geographic or the New York Times) is not as lucrative as corporate writing. However, I have to say I truly enjoy keeping my "toe in the water" writing for the local paper.
I like knowing what is going on in my local government. It's not something many people (and until recently, that included me) know about -- but, we should. You've heard the line "you should know where your tax dollars go," but after decades of ignoring this cliche, I find myself believing it.
Kool-aide drunk, resulting article follows...
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City budget decisions loom, time for
you -- yes, you -- to get involved
By Rebecca
Wicks
March 7, 2013
It’s
time.
It’s time
to think about what matters most to us as residents of the City of Ventura
because city staff is starting to think about it. And, what’s more soon enough the Ventura City
Council will be making decisions about what will and will not funded this next
fiscal year. They will be making these
decisions with or without your input, so I say, give them your input.
Here’s the
skinny. The fiscal year we are talking
about goes from Jul. 1, 2013 through Jun. 30, 2014. City staff will present their recommended
budget on Apr. 22. Then, throughout May
and the first half of June, the council will take that budget and finagle it
until everyone (okay, clearly not everyone) will be happy, having created a
passable budget. The final budget will
be voted on Jun. 17.
Simple,
right? Not really. As Ventura’s Chief Financial Officer Jay
Panzica explained, we have essentially been stealing from Peter to give to Paul
for the past couple of years and it’s catching up with us.
When the
economy headed south the city opted not to borrow money or take money from its
reserve fund (which is slated for catastrophic events, e.g., an earthquake). Instead, in order to pay for services
councilmembers thought dire, it took money from internal department funds. These departments include those that take
care of other departments such as the technology group, which fixes and
supports computers used throughout the city, the maintenance group that cares
for all of the city’s vehicles and the
facilities group, which maintains city buildings.
According
to Panzica these internal groups have been neglected for too many years now,
and are in somewhat critical need of funding.
It is this point among others Panzica has been working to illustrate to city council
members who have been sitting through educational workshops run by
Panzica. The workshop meetings focus on
outlining what has been done budget-wise for the past four to five years.
Oh, and another
thing, there is a discrepancy between forecasted revenues and our past fiscal
years budget. This means, if the city
were to change nothing in its existing budget we would still be $1.2 million
short. That doesn’t include funding
those internal departments, which have been languishing the last 5 years.
All this
means some serious decisions need to be made.
“The city
council members are going to have to decide between a lot of important and
conflicting priorities,” said Panzica.
And, again
it’s not always as simple as picking one or two priorities. As Panzica points out, no one city service
exists in a vacuum.
“You can’t
just say we want more police and say forget everything else,” explained
Panzica. “The police department is
supported by other departments in the city and can’t function alone.”
What can
you do? You can write a letter or email
to councilmembers telling them what you want from your local government. You can attend a Monday night city council
meeting where there is time for the public to come forward. Again, a crucial time period where council
members will be actively hashing through what to spend money on will be between
Apr. 22 and early June.
If you want
to learn more about the city’s budget, there are a number of resources to tap,
almost all of them online. You can
review what this year’s budget included by viewing the Budget Book documents
online or you can peruse last year’s budget a lengthy document entitled
Comprehensive Financial Annual Financial Report (CFAFR), which reads similar to
a traditional company’s annual report.
The
councilmembers have some tough decisions ahead of them. I’m suggesting we give them some help. They are, after all, suppose to be
representing us. If we don’t give them
input on what we feel the priorities need to be, then we only have ourselves to
blame.
