fresno elections 2008

Any incoming office holders will face serious fiscal challenges over the next four years. The subprime loan meltdown and looming recession will adversely affect property tax, sales tax and other revenue sources for local government. Preliminary estimates for the FY 2008-09 budget are showing a deficit of $14 million to $20 million. The city has about a $16 million surplus that will cushion most of the deficit the first year. Ensuing years will become more problematic.

There will be three ways to balance the city budget: decrease costs, raise taxes or fees and increase revenues. I will advocate a zero based budgeting where each year the entire city budget and all departments must examine their costs and justify each line item expense starting from a zero base. It is too easy to go on year to year without seriously examining the operation of each city department. A careful, analytical analysis of the city budget should reveal some duplications, inefficiencies, and waste. With a $1 billion budget a 1% savings would be $10 million. The general fund portion of the budget has steadily escalated over the years to about $250 million. Although I would want to protect as many city jobs as possible we may have to seriously evaluate outsourcing certain city services that can be done at a substantial savings while delivering the same level of service. In the event certain city services would have to be cut my priority would be to maintain public safety services.

I will never say never but I would see tax increases as the last answer to solving budget problems. The city has already embarked on a mission to increase fees and fines. The fire department now charges all rental property owners annual inspection fees whether or not there are any problems at the property. A large amount of police department resources are now devoted to traffic enforcement to increase fees from traffic citations. There are other examples and these types of fees balance the budget on the backs of small business and tax payers. The fee increase I do agree with is the recent increases to development fees that had been unchanged for many years.

The planning department operates on the enterprise status where the revenues generated from permit fees, plan check fees and development fees pay for department expenses. Although there is an inherent potential conflict of interest in enterprise status it can be successful if properly run. Expanding enterprise status to other city services could be a way to generate more revenues to offset rising costs of government.

The city can aggressively try to raise their revenue sources through successfully promoting business. My detailed description of developing a 500 plus acre industrial park in the economic development questions would generate millions of dollars in new revenues for the city.

I can offer the same example from my answer to the economic development question of improving city revenues through filling vacant hotel rooms and generating more revenues. Once elected, I will have time to fully understand the entire city budget and operations and be in a position to find other potential solutions to the budget problem.