Monrovia Takes $1 Million Hit From Loss of Redevelopment

Monrovia City Manager Laurie Lile reports that this year Monrovia has taken a $1 million hit because it has had to absorb the costs associated with the loss of the City's Redevelopment Agency. But, still, the city came up with a balanced budget.

Of the state's budget process, she writes that:

It's unsettling, to say the least, that these important decisions are made in the opacity of the legislative conference room, with little to no input from the constituencies that will be most affected.  We are expending a considerable amount of staff time and energy to monitor the progress of these bills so that we can respond immediately to the actions proposed by the legislature - just as soon as those actions are revealed to anyone beyond the inner offices of the State Capitol building. ...

This balanced budget was achieved through pension cost-sharing with employees, a new two-tier retirement system and no increase in staffing.

Some more budget numbers from Lile:

Of the $31.97 million in projected General Fund revenues, the majority (58%) comes in through property tax and sales tax revenues.
The greatest expenditure from the City General Fund comes from Public Safety: 40% from Police and 29% from Fire.

General Fund personnel costs are budgeted for $22.46 million, however, in accordance with the Council priorities, total cost should not exceed 75% of net operating costs.  In order to meet long range financial targets, the City will continue to negotiate with employee groups to pick up their full the share of PERS employee pension costs by the 2013-2014 budget.

The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), funded through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is being reduced by 21%, or $66,000, scaling back programs for safe and healthy neighborhoods.

Annual street resurfacing will continue through 2013 using Prop C funding.

After the loss of Redevelopment, the City had a net loss of $1 million.  As a result, 4 vacant positions within the City were eliminated, overhead charges to all City operations were increased by 1%, phone and computer replacement allocations were reduced, and vehicle and equipment replacement was deferred.

- Brad Haugaard