The San Bruno Beacon

"As the City Council is well aware, the City of San Bruno has experienced a serious reduction in its ongoing general fund revenue stream since approximately the fiscal year 2002-2003 it is through prudent fiscal policy and aggressive budget management that the City has successfully maintained all necessary and basic City services in spite of the fact that across the board reductions have occurred in our budget deliberations ah to all City services and as a result, ah the City has been significantly impacted in both the quantity as well as the level of important services that it is able to provide."

In a nutshell, the answer to San Bruno's chronic budget deficit problem is to cut the City's cost of doing business. City Manager Jackson has had four years to make the cuts necessary to balance San Bruno's budget and create a budget surplus. She has failed to do so.

Jackson talks about using prudent fiscal policy and aggressive budget management to maintain all necessary and basic City services. Constant and punishing tax, rate, and fee increases on San Bruno's residents must be what Jackson is talking about when she talks about "aggressive budget management". Also, there is nothing "prudent" about this City Council's and/or Jackson's mismanagement of San Bruno's finances.

The City of San Bruno can maintain a higher level of City services for San Bruno's residents by reducing both the number of top management employees as well as the salary and benefit packages of the top management employees who remain. Simply stated, San Bruno's City government is an army with too many high paid generals sitting around in offices and not enough sergeants and privates on the streets providing necessary and essential City services to San Bruno's residents.

The City Council and Jackson have put the City of San Bruno is such a financial hole that they want San Bruno's voters to approve a 1/2 cent sales tax in the November 2007 election so the Council and City Manager will have more money to mismanage. Here are 3 ways that this 1/2 cent sales tax raises the financial misery index on San Bruno's residents and businesses: First, San Bruno's residents will have to pay higher taxes on most things they buy. Second, anyone who has taken a basic course in economics knows that the added sales tax will reduce the amount of sales tax revenues generated by San Bruno based businesses because shoppers will just shop somewhere else instead of paying the higher sales tax. The City of San Bruno will probably end up with less overall sales tax revenue than it had before the 1/2 cent increase in sales tax. Third, this sales tax is a regressive tax; lower income San Bruno residents are disproportionately impacted because they have to use a higher a percentage of their income to pay the sales tax.

Raising taxes, rates, and fees is not a solution; giving more money to a fiscally irresponsible City government enables more fiscal mismanagement.

San Bruno City Manager Jackson admits that she and the City Council knew that the City of San Bruno has experienced a serious reduction the City of San Bruno's ongoing general fund revenue stream since "approximately the fiscal year 2002-2003". Yet, San Bruno's City Council and Manager have refused to make the cuts in the City Budget that are necessary to balance San Bruno's budget and create a surplus. Approximately 80% of the City of San Bruno's Budget is used to pay for City employee salaries, benefits, and perks. The top management employees in San Bruno receive generous salaries, medical plans, retirement benefits, and perks.

Here's a list of the salaries paid to the City of San Bruno's top management level employees (these salaries do not include their expense accounts, car allowances, medical and life insurance benefits, retirement benefits, etc.):

You can expect, budget deficit or not, the above salaries will be increasing as this group pushes for ever higher salary and benefit packages.

As I mentioned in a previous paragraph, approximately 80% of San Bruno's City Budget is spent paying for salaries, perks, retirement plans and employee related costs. Therefore, the budget cuts need to be made in these areas. This City Council and Manager refuse to make the cuts in the budget that are necessary to balance San Bruno's budget and create a surplus or the budget would have been balanced and we would have had a surplus. Therefore, San Bruno's residents must face a never ending cycle of tax, rate, and fee increases.

An example of how you might start to cut the City of San Bruno's budget deficit and create a surplus would be to cut the salary and benefit packages for City of San Bruno's top management level employees, whose salaries are shown in the above list, by 25% - 40% and/or (with the exception of the Police Chief and Fire Chief) layoff the number of City of San Bruno Department Directors necessary to reduce the Department Director payroll by 25% - 40%. This is the type of solution that must be made to balance San Bruno's budget, create a surplus, and lower rates, fees, and taxes on San Bruno's residents.