The Lakeport City Council and city staff held a nearly four-hour budget workshop on Monday.
At that time, the council approved the preliminary budget, which it's required to do this summer ahead of the formal budget adoption, according to City Manager Margaret Silveira.
The proposed 2010-11 budget, which Silveira said totals $12.3 million with enterprise funds, is down from the current fiscal year budget, which adds up to $15.2 million.
“We did not lay anybody off,” she said. “That's important.”
Silveira said she hopes the final budget will be adopted by the second meeting in July.
At that time, some capital improvement projects will return to the council for further discussion and the document will be fine tuned, she said.
The current fiscal year's budget included several large projects, including City of Lakeport Municipal Sewer District Projects the city needed to complete, Silveira said. Some projects are being rolled over from last year's budget, she added.
Expenditures have been cut for the coming year, she said, but some benefits are up, including a 3 percent at 50 retirement plan for police, which was included in a contract three years ago.
“The biggest challenge is, the revenues keep going down each year,” she said.
Among the important revenue sources is property tax. Silveira said the city won't know the property tax situation until July, but she said city staff budgeted for that revenue source to be 1 percent lower.
Sales tax, another large portion of the city's general fund, also is down a little this fiscal year, although in this year's first quarter it went up 3.9 percent, according to Silveira.
“We projected conservative revenue and hope that, in the end, we're looking at surplus,” she said.
The city's Measure I fund, which is accumulated through a half-cent sales tax, is down slightly from last year. Silveira didn't have a full balance readily available.
“It's definitely helped during these trying times,” she said.
Transient occupancy tax, or bed tax paid by accommodations also was down quite a bit from last year, Silveira said.
While there are no layoffs, some dark positions are being kept open, according to Silveira.
The Lakeport Police Department will see two unfilled positions kept vacant, reducing its total number of sworn officers from 13 to 11. Silveira said 10 of those police positions will be paid for by the city, with one covered by a COPS grant supplied by stimulus funding.
She said the city has always run with about 12 sworn officers.
The city will unfreeze one park position that will be covered by an employee funded by a Workforce Investment Act employment program, she said. Layoffs also have been avoided by reorganizing certain departments and reassigning employees.
“We didn't want to create any more unemployment in the county by laying off employees,” she said.
There are no furloughs proposed at this point, but Silveira said the city is still in negotiations with the Lakeport Employees Association, and she's not sure if furloughs will end up being an issue.
This was the first budget for Silveira, who started with the city in April.
She said city staff has been great and very supportive of her as she got settled and jumped into the budget process.
“Everybody understands the situation,” she said.
Silveira added, “The department heads have worked very close with me to trim the budget down. It was a good process in bad times.”
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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