Santa Barbara City Council Passes Budget
Tracy Lehr
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) The Santa Barbara City Council unanimously passed its next fiscal budget.
“So the budget that the city council passed today is a balanced budget, we are living within our means, we are implementing priority projects that are important to this community, but we still have financial challenges, so what we are doing over the next couple of months, we are identifying ways to replenish those reserves to get us into a place where we are even more financial stable,” said City of Santa Barbara Finance Director Keith DeMartini.
The city’s Finance Director said if they delay passing the budget it would have hurt the credit rating and put capitol projects on hold.
“The city’s General Fund total budget is about $260 million and the total amount that we are below our reserve policy target of around $30 million, but about $6 million of that is the amount that we dipped into our emergency reserves, so that is what the city council talked about today is the priority to replenish those disaster reserves and what they talked about today and gave decisive action was to direct staff and the finance committee is to work towards identifying specific solutions to replenishing those disaster reserves,” said DeMartini.
The goal is to have 25 percent of the fiscal budget in reserves for emergencies such as a weather-related disaster.
The city also passed a motion to direct the finance committee to find a source to fund the local housing trust fund to help with the housing crisis.
The finance director said they are also about to get funding from a streaming lawsuit that allows the city to recoup streaming service taxes to the tune of $2 million that should reduce the use of emergency reserved by a third.
“The city has been successful with some recent litigation where our existing utility users tax is applicable on streaming services like Netflix, like Disney Plus, those services and we have been very successful with that litigation so we are going to see some one time revenue going back 3 years and then we will see some ongoing revenue going forward,” said DeMartini.
Also during the lengthy meeting the City of Santa Barbara Fire Department started counting votes to create a Coastal Wildfire Suppression Assessment District.
The interim implementation of the State Street Master Plan is the last item on the agenda and many people at the meeting wore open State Street stickers and plan to speak during public comments on the issue.
Your News Channel will have more on the budget and other agenda items on the news tonight.