City leaders apparently believe hope is a fiscal strategy.
City leaders apparently believe hope is a fiscal strategy.
In doing so, in hoping the economy magically turns around and that they can “buy time” by recently pulling a $1.2 million trick from their sleeve, they have set a poor and legally questionable precedent.
City Manager Clint Quilter last week informed council members of a plan to divert $1.2 million from the redevelopment agency’s sale of the future courthouse property, the old Fremont School, to the financially ailing general fund reserve.
Cities with RDA districts legally are restricted in how they spend those dollars, which have to go toward economic development and affordable housing. In this case, city leaders devised a formula assuming the old school lot would have become a viable commercial property. From there, they derived how much potential sales tax it might have earned under such a theory.
Quilter repeatedly told council members the move should help officials “buy time” while waiting for the economy to turn around. They also clearly are doing it to appease the employee groups whose members are set to accept 5 percent pay cuts. If there’s money in the reserve, layoffs are less likely. It’s a bargaining tool.
This, however, is the same irresponsible management of a structural deficit that has burned away a once-touted $15 million reserve in seven years and left city leaders in a constant scramble to stay above water. Under this strategy, the ultimate question becomes: When will the city sink?
Council members and the city manager haven’t learned from the past seven years. This style of management, just getting by, has no chance of creating progress in the long term.
At some point, city leaders must decide if they really want to take on the problem or if they will continue putting it off for someone else, for some other council, for some other day. That, after all, is the City of Hollister way.
