There's good news with the budget so far – rumblings about the need to lay off park staff and darken police department vacancies or to close the city's pool don't appear to be turning into reality in the new fiscal year.
A two-hour budget session preceded a brief council meeting of less than 40 minutes Tuesday.
The council spent the budget session looking over general fund expenditures and revenues. Estimated general fund expenditures for the 2008-09 budget year is $5,655,080, as opposed to $5,412,828 in revenue.
However, that slight discrepancy in revenues and expenses could be offset by a projected general fund balance of $668,221 that the city expects to have as it moves into the next budget year.
The city also is keeping a new $400,000 line of credit handy in case it's needed to balance the budget. City Manager Jerry Gillham told Lake County News in a recent interview that the city's financial snapshot has led him to conclude that they are looking at a budget shortfall of about $500,000.
The top five general fund expenditure categories for the coming budget year are public works, $2,125,522; police, $1,755,136; parks, $404,982; trash collection, $378,000; and finance, $342,828. Among other expenses, the Westshore Pool is projected to cost the city $42,381, with animal control services that the city wishes to add to the police department's duties budgeted at $25,000.
In order to fine tune the budget before acceptance, the council asked Finance Director Janet Tavernier to provide more information on projects funded by Measure I – a sales tax measure used to support city projects, including roads and the pool repairs – for the current fiscal year and the one ahead.
Police Chief Kevin Burke – who will take over as interim city manager when Gillham leaves on a National Guard deployment to Iraq on Aug. 1 – suggested to the council that they consider using Measure I funds to keep city services at current levels for the short-term.
City Clerk Janel Chapman said the council will hold a special meeting at 4 p.m. Tuesday, July 29, to consider accepting the budget and also look at proposed traffic impact mitigation fees.
Council reconsiders bed and breakfast ordinance, adopts fees
During the regular council meeting, city resident Suzanne Lyons reminded the council in the public comment period that they had promised to revisit televising meetings this month, after they received a free Web cam from a city resident and requests to broadcast the meetings.
“If the city of Clearlake can do it, we should be able to do it,” Lyons said, referring to the Clearlake City Council's decision last week to bless broadcasts of their meetings on TV Channel 8.
The council once again took up an ordinance meant to return the word “maximum” to the city's zoning ordinance when it comes to the number of rooms allowed in a bed and breakfast inn.
The topic has led to lengthy discussions at both council and Planning Commission meetings in recent months, along with repeated revisions of the ordinance's specifics. One previous version had not allowed bed and breakfasts in residential areas.
At the last council meeting, the council had sent the ordinance back to planning staff once more to have additional language added, this time to limit the number of occupants per room to four.
The updated ordinance would allow for a maximum of five rooms, with inns having more bedrooms requiring special Planning Commission approval. Planning Services Manager Andrew Britton said a facility with six or more rooms usually is considered a hotel.
Councilman Jim Irwin suggested that the wording allowing more rooms on approval was a conflict with the updated language and suggested it not be accepted. However, Britton said the ability to seek more rooms already was in the current ordinance language.
When it looked like the council might veer into minutiae about parts of the ordinance that weren't up for consideration, Community Development and Utilities Director Mark Brannigan reminded them that the original intent of the update was merely to replace a missing word – “maximum” – that inadvertently had been left off of a previous ordinance relating to the inns.
Brannigan said they haven't done an in-depth review of the ordinance, but that there haven't been any issues with it other than the missing word.
The council voted 4-1, with Irwin voting no, to accept the revised ordinance's first reading and schedule it for a public hearing on Aug. 5.
The only other agenda item for the evening was acceptance of updated city service fees, which the council sent back to staff at a previous meeting to have them add on annual consumer price index increases. With that completed, the council accepted the fees 5-0.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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