Hard Budget Decisions

The City Council makes hard decisions, but laying off employees is the hardest. At its regular meeting Tuesday night, May 3, the Council may decide to reopen city employee contract agreements to avoid potential layoffs as we address the $1.7 million deficit for the 2011-12 budget.

Action is necessary to achieve a budget with balanced expenditures and revenue projections for fiscal year 2011-12. Our employees stepped up in 2010 when agreeing to salary and benefits reductions requested by the Council. Revenues on which the city depends are lower because of depressed property values, lower Benicia Industrial Park sales taxes and lower franchise fees, so we continue to make expenditure adjustments. The choice between layoffs and salary and benefits reductions is not a welcome one, but the situation speaks for itself.

These decisions are grounded in the Council’s policy to maintain a balanced budget, to avoid service cuts and to maintain fair and competitive salaries. To quote our 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Our city employees have been inventive, creative and frugal in finding ways to reduce costs and maintain our parks as the jewels of Benicia; our police deparment’s vigilant effectiveness; our fire department’s dependable and responsible emergency response; our water quality for drinking; our wastewater treatment to avoid polluting the Carquinez Strait; and other everyday public safety and administrative needs.

Their efforts are commendable. But it is not enough in the face of such a severe revenue shortfall. That is why we have the decision Tuesday night about further layoffs and potential salary and benefits reductions.

CSC Lecture-Workshop Series

The Community Sustainability Commission has worked hard to make this lecture-workshop series possible and would love to have your full participation in this FREE series.
This is a working collaboration with Solano Community College. Here's the series at one glance.

Stewards of our Children's Future: 2011

for Ecologic and Economic health
+ Community Resilience

Free Public lecture-workshop series

Smart Growth Conference

I attended the 10th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference sponsored by the Local Government Commission in Charlotte, North Carolina, from Wednesday through Sunday, Feb. 3-5, 2011. There were about 1,300 attendees from all over the United States, a mix of elected officials, local, state and federal officials, planners, public health professionals, developers and others concerned with healthy and livable communities. Vallejo City Council member Marti Brown attended as well but no other Solano officials or staff. This is too bad because many concurrent sessions were on topics of considerable interest including investment strategies for infrastructure, winning bond elections for transportation (light rail, bicycle routes and "complete streets"), locally grown food, and sea level rise.

The conference is co-sponsored by 170 organizations with wide ranging interests, and the major funder this year was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Environmental Justice. Speakers and presenters included high ranking government officials, including former cabinet secretaries and governors as well as people simply doing great work.

I went on two tours: a bus tour of three communities who collectively adopted form base zoning (similar code adopted for Benicia Downtown Master Plan and Zoning Code - CA Neighborhood). The first stop was the Town of Davidson, located 20 miles north of Charlotte. Davidson is home of Davidson College - an historic small college campus. Davidson is built for pedestrians and bike riders, not for the car. No drive thrus are allowed here. We believe in connectivity and walkable streets.

As we toured the narrow streets, we saw mixed use (both within buildings and neighborhoods). In Davidson, all commercial property must front a public street - the unexpected benefit of this requirement is that the public safety is better and done by the city rather than private security patrols typical of shopping areas with public streets. Below is a grocery store on a public street. When you drive off the interstate into Davidson, you see offices, restaurants and hotels but you also see green space, homes, schools and shops all accessible by pedestrians. Davidson is the 2004 Smart Growth Award winner for Overall Excellence in town planning and design. (Read More...)

Steady Helm in a Storm

(This post also appeared in the Benicia Herald Opinion column, 1/4/2011)
 
“The city sure has been taking a beating,” a merchant told me last week in front of his shop. I couldn’t agree more. His comment was referring to the letters, columns and blogs with constructive — and some not so constructive — opinions about how to run the city.

This column is about where we — the city of Benicia, its staff, commissioners and Council members — have been and where we are going. Readers are welcome to respond on my blog (www.elizabethpatterson.blogspot.com), in the Benicia Herald, or during my open office hours.

They may also attend the workshops, study sessions and Council meetings we will conduct in 2011. Last year we held more than 30, posted surveys, and ran community open houses. This coming year I invite those who write letters, columns and blogs, as well as residents who read them or not, to participate in the extensive city outreach effort to: a) access and vet information; b) explore volunteer opportunities; and c) consider more new and untried budget solutions. Your participation is vital for the important decisions that will be made for our city in 2011.

Earlier this year, I affirmed at Council meetings that “we are all in this boat together” as we enter the third year of the Great Recession. The country’s financial meltdown is the result of many factors, but especially the reckless risk-taking by financial institutions, the ripple effect of which affected our neighborhoods, jobs, available funds for small businesses — and public anger.

Seeno Attacks Mayor (remember 2007 election?)

It is unfortunate that the Seeno Corporation has withdrawn its application for a vesting tentative map rather than live up to its verbal commitment to the City Council. Here's what hapened: After the Council voted to deny the project, Seeno approached the council to have the denial reconsidered and the Council adopted a resolution with stipulations for a specific plan, development agreement and new EIR. Seeno agreed verbally and by a general letter in order to have Council "stay" the denial. That was and is their agreement. When the council asked for detailed written assurances from Seeno that they would live up to that verbal and general letter agreement, Seeno withdrew their application.

Why now? Because next year is an election year. It apears that they don't want a strong Mayor who stands up to Seeno. They don't want a Mayor who insists on protecting the hills, air and water, and avoid big-time traffic increases. And they don't want a Mayor who asks for assurances in writing. As your Mayor, I believe that requiring Seeno to stick to their word is what is best for the City. We negotiated in good faith and they have chosen to withdraw.

Seeno says that my reciting newspaper accounts detailing the Seeno Corporation's violation of grading ordinances, Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act and numerous air pollution violations is slanderous. Really? Read their letter and stay tuned for more attacks and campaign fodder.

Inconvenient Truths Come in Many Packages

Inconvenient truths come in many packages. I remember as a child the "debate" about the source of smog in Los Angeles. While I would get sick and my eyes would sting, I listened to adults argue about where smog came from. (Later on when I was working at Cal-Tech-JPL which is in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains north of Pasadena, I would have morning coffee outside and watched the grey stuff literally form like a vapor trail along the valley's freeways). For years the public read and listened to industry, oil and auto companies protest loudly that cars were not the source of smog. Technically, this is true. Smog is formed from the action of sun and warm temperatures on the chemicals emitted by refineries, power-plants and cars. Today it is universally accepted that cars pollute and contribute to smog. A similar so-called debate about tobacco raged on for years about whether tobacco did it or did not cause cancer. Lies and more lies by the tobacco industry came to light after a whistleblower and other heros produced documents about the deliberate scientific-speak obfuscation by the tobacco industry.

As Ronald Reagan famously said, and I paraphrase, "here we go again" with the so-called global warming, climate change debate. This is not a debate but a calculated effort by a few to cast doubt in the public's mind about whether or not we should be changing our fossil fuel habits.

Survey - we want your opinion

We want your opinion about city budget solutions. Take a survey! The following introduction explains the survey available by clicking on the link below. After you take the survey of which services you think are important and which services could be cut, you may want to make other recommendations. Unfortunately the survey does not provide for comments. Please feel free to click on the "comments" link at the bottom of this post and make your comments.

The City of Benicia wants to know what your priorities are for City services. While the City has fared well during the first two years of the economic recession, City revenues dropped sharply this year and are not expected to return to previous levels soon. This revenue decline impacts the City’s ability to support the current level of services.

This survey of community priorities will help ensure that we know what the community values most and enable us to tailor our spending in ways that match community priorities.

Thank you for taking the time to answer the questions in the survey. Working together, we will make the best decisions possible.

Your answers to the questions below will tell us about the importance of a list of services provided by the City of Benicia. Please note that only services, programs and facilities funded from the General Fund are listed.

Click on the following link to take the survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3DJ72MP