Fullerton officials slashed millions in spending mainly by cutting 26 vacant jobs, including six police positions and a fire marshal opening to help adopt a balanced budget more than a month past the state deadline without dipping into general fund reserves.
Officials also eliminated nearly $300,000 on library expenses by reducing staffing and programs, cutting book collection funding and online resources to help with kids’ homework.
It comes after city council members couldn’t agree on a sales tax increase measure to help fund street repairs.
The late adoption of the budget comes as efforts to recall two city council members – including the mayor – are underway and after a multi-million dollar accounting error left elected leaders to believe they had more in their reserves when it was already allocated elsewhere.
[Read: Recall Efforts, A Failed Sales Tax Proposal, An Ongoing Deficit: Fullerton’s Wild Ride]
On Tuesday, city council members voted 3-2 to adopt their budget, cutting nearly $7 million in spending – including eliminating more than two dozen vacant positions, cutting their New Year’s Eve celebration and reducing their Fourth of July event to only a fireworks show.
[Read: Fullerton Looks to Adopt New Budget a Month Late With Millions in Cuts]
Mayor Fred Jung said the cuts are tough, but officials need to be responsible with taxpayer dollars.
“At a time when ordinary Fullertonians and those that have businesses here are forced to make very difficult choices with their own money, it seems irrational that government shouldn’t be exercising the same discipline they are,” he said.
“Living within our means is important because government spends money that ultimately comes from the people.”
Councilmembers Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles were the dissenting votes, with Zahra calling the spending plan “irresponsible” and “reactionary.”
“We had a measured approach that we could have adopted that wouldn’t have been as drastic as this,” Zahra said at Tuesday’s meeting. “The services that are being cut are going to impact some of the more disadvantaged neighborhoods in our city. District five will certainly be impacted. Graffiti does happen.”
Councilman Nick Dunlap said officials are responding to their structural deficit while thinking about fiscal stability.
“We’ve got to deal with reality and the reality is we’re dealing with a deficit. We had to make cuts in order to get ourselves into a bit of a better situation,” he said at Tuesday’s meeting.
“I know that it’s going to be rocky along the way but I think that this path will give us an opportunity to work things out.”
In the past few months, elected officials were able to wind down an initially projected $14 million budget deficit to a nearly $4 million budget gap.
As part of the spending slashes, officials are also cutting and reducing security at city hall, the community center and Hunt Library, reducing graffiti removal services by $150,000 as well as deferring $250,000 in facility improvements.
Councilwoman Charles said graffiti removal is needed in the district she represents, adding there is “somewhat of a gang war” between a local gang and one from Placentia who are tagging walls in the area.
“This is something that’s really commonly known by both our police force and by long-term residents,” she said.
“These tags can be dangerous. We have a whole wall on Placentia Avenue that gets tagged occasionally with basically people trying to warn other people that they’re going to kill them in the streets, and we have to report that. And I’m glad that the graffiti removal was there to be able to take those things down.”
Elected leaders also approved slashing the over $200,000 budget for buying books for adults and teens as well as $30,000 for electronic resources at the library – expenses officials say groups like The Library Foundation and Friends of the Library will subsidize.
Zahra questioned if the groups would be able to cover the funding for the books.
“It is shameful in a city that calls itself the city of education that we are defunding books from the library. There is no foundation or nonprofit that can substitute for what we would provide,” he said.
City officials also shifted $2.5 million in maintenance funds to the general fund, along with a just under $1 million from other funds to help balance the budget, according to their proposed budget.
They also decided to reduce their allocation to their worker compensation fund from the general fund by $2.3 million and plan on pulling $1 million from worker comp reserves to reinstate some positions and services – including an economic development specialist and increase their budget for police overtime.
Click here to view the budget.
The budget was adopted after contracted auditors told elected leaders earlier this year to hire a government-experienced chief accountant, increase fiscal oversight and present the budget in a more transparent way moving forward.
[Read: Auditors Question if Fullerton is Properly Overseeing Budget]
Councilwoman Jaime Valencia said the budget can be changed as the year progresses.
“This isn’t a say-all-be-all for the budget and there is room for improvement throughout the year. Our city manager is looking into that and keeping an eye on it. We did have an audit. We are on the right path. We still have a lot of work to do ahead. This is not an easy task,” she said.
According to projections in the adopted budget, the city estimates to maintain $16 million in reserves in the next three years under the spending plan.
The projection on the reserves don’t assume any employee raises – a point Charles asked about publicly Tuesday.
City staff said the assumptions don’t take into account raises employee unions could negotiate when their contracts end in the next couple years.
Jung said this year’s budget process is transparent.
“This process has been about as transparent as the budget process has been in the city for a very long time,” he said.
Zahra pushed back, pointing to the need to hire auditors after their budgeting team made a multi-million dollar mistake that saw the city run through $10.1 million in unassigned reserves quicker than elected officials expected.
“There has been proof that the process of budgeting has not been transparent in the city. We had an audit that showed transparency issues.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org.
