Santa Maria City Council Cuts Into $25 Million Deficit, Now Looking at New Revenue Streams
Dave Alley
SANTA MARIA, Calif. (KEYT) – The Santa Maria City Council cut into a $25.1 million deficit on Tuesday night by approving a number of a number of “budget amendments.”
“The staff brought for the City Council recommendations to reduce, the budget,” said Chuen Wu, Santa Maria Assistant City Manager. “The council approved the recommendations, so I feel like we’re making progress on addressing the city’s budget deficit and yesterday was kind of a big step towards that.”
Among the proposals that were approved by councilmembers were a number of capital improvement projects that must now be delayed, cancelled, or funded with another source.
The Recreation and Parks Department in particular received significant budget reductions totalling more than $4.3 million.
“The council approved last night a reduction plan to put on hold a lot of the capital projects that we had planned for the future,” said Dennis Smitherman, Recreation and Parks Department Interim Director. “Things like sports field ADA access (at Simas Park), new lights (at Elks Field), different aspects for the department to help continue to grow as we grow in the community. They’re not canceled. They’re just on pause for right now. andwe’re looking to keep those items on that list and to make sure that they stay front and forward, and as funding becomes available, either through general fund dollars or potentially grant dollars, we’ll be able to go out and ask for that funding again.”
The Fire Department will also have a large amount of funding rebalanced with City Council approving more $3.8 million in reductions, including $3.629 million earmarked for the expansion of Fire Station 1.
“The Station 1 expansion has to be done,” said Santa Maria Fire Chief Brad Dandridge. “With the future growth that our city is expecting, and with the expected downtown infill projects that have been approved for the community, we need to expand station one to hold additional firefighters to ensure that the service levels that are provided our community stay at the level that they need to be. The project isn’t being delayed. The project isn’t being canceled. We have Congressman Salud Carbajal that has proposed that $1.23 million grant for us to allow the project to continue. We’re also looking at alternate funding to ensure that that project continues on path.”
In addition, the city will continue to operate with a smaller work staff as hiring to fill open positions will now be paused indefinitely.
“There were 24 full-time positions that have been vacant,” said Wu. “Many of these positions have been vacant a while and so we decided to remove the budget allocations for those positions. There were also part-time hours that we’re going to remove off the books, and so we’re really trying to be efficient and lean with the people that we have, but still try and provide the same level of services.”
Among the open positions that will remain unfilled are 10 with the police department and eight with the fire department.
“We are not reducing the service that we’re providing our community,” said Dandridge. “Although those positions are unfilled on paper, we continue the minimum daily staffing levels that we have contracted with our community to ensure the service that we provide is at the level that our community deserves and expects.”
With the first round of budget amendments now approved, City Council is now looking at new ways to increase future revenue streams.
On Tuesday, City Council approved up to $36,500 in funding to hire DHM Research to provide PublicOpinion Survey Research and Ballot Measure Polling Services.
“We’re exploring potential revenue options,” said Wu. “We’ve enlisted a polling services to just kind of gauge community sentiment on the potential of whether it’s, sales tax or a parcel tax, or rental tax, those are options that are being explored, but we want to get a sense of what the community feels and we also want to have direction from our council. It’s a discussion that we’re having at the moment and we’re having those conversations within the next couple of months. Everything that we’re talking about really has lead into the next, budget that we intend to adopt for ’26 through ’28.”
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