San Juan Bautista
– The San Juan Bautista City Council voted Tuesday to continue
cutting city services through measures including a freeze on the
fire department’s equipment purchases. The city will pursue even
more cuts, include closing the sheriff department’s local station,
in the coming year.
San Juan Bautista – The San Juan Bautista City Council voted Tuesday to continue cutting city services through measures including a freeze on the fire department’s equipment purchases. The city will pursue even more cuts, include closing the sheriff department’s local station, in the coming year.
According to City Manager Jan McClintock, an ongoing decline in tourist traffic and the resulting sales tax revenue has hurt the city’s finances. If the city doesn’t balance its books, McClintock said it could go broke in 12 to 18 months – and if that happens, San Juan Bautista will no longer be an incorporated city.
Some cuts, including the fire department freeze, will take effect immediately. The council will pursue putting others, including the station closure, in place for fiscal year 2007-08.
San Juan Bautista contracts with the sheriff’s department to provide the city’s law enforcement services. Councilman Edward Laverone, who is a captain with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department, said that if deputies need to interview a suspect in private, they could use City Hall or other locations. And the deputies can write their reports in their cars, he said.
“I used to park in front of the biggest drug dealer I could find to write the report,” Laverone said.
The council already voted to reduce the city library’s hours, but Councilman Rick Edge said they should look consider moving library staff to an all-volunteer basis.
“That’s the kind of service a city our size doesn’t need to provide,” Edge said.
Also on Tuesday, City Accountant Wendy Becker presented a report on the city’s year-to-date finances.
“We’re not doing too bad in the general fund,” Becker said.
But Becker cautioned that those numbers are deceptive because many of the city has received many one-time funds such as state and federal grants, as well as a long-delayed fee payment of nearly $200,000. McClintock said that based on consistent revenues and expenses alone, the city takes in 20 percent less money than it spends.
“We have a structural deficit,” McClintock said. “Recurring dollars in the general fund do not cover recurring expenses.”
Even with these cuts, McClintock said the city will likely have to raise around $300,000 to balance its budget next year. The council will find out exactly how much it needs when the fiscal year 2007-08 budget is presented in May. At that point, they’ll discuss how they can raise that money, McClintock said; she added that raising taxes could be a real possibility.
Potential future developments like the San Juan Bautista Artisan’s Plaza and soon-to-be-annexed land south of Highway 156 could save the city coffers, McClintock said, but they won’t bring in revenue for four or five years at the earliest.
“We have to keep the city alive until those revenues can be achieved,” she said.
San Juan Bautista resident Ted Thoeny told the Free Lance that if the city wants to fix its financial problems, it needs to consider annexing more land. Thoeny emphasized that he doesn’t want “to see the San Juan Valley become a city,” but he said bringing a large facility like the Natural Selection packaging plant into San Juan Bautista could be a major windfall.
“You’re either going to grow or you’re going to die,” Thoeny said.
