City Budget - What's Missing

Yesterday we looked at the overview of the budget. Today we’ll look at a number of issues that are missing from the 200+ page budget. We'll begin with salaries and total benefits.

PERSONNEL COSTS

For some reason salaries are omitted from the budget report so I did some digging and came up with this - The data is from TransparentCalifornia and is based on 2014 which is way out of date but the most recent available. The first figure is “total compensation” and the figure in parentheses is salary only.

• · Robert Dunek, City Manager - $318,836 ($247,875)
• · Bradley Valentine, Chief of Police - $273,793 ($134,398)
• · Gayle Ackerman, Development Services - $234,448 ($165,131)
• · Keith Neves, Finance - $208,854 ($160,092)
• · Tom Wheeler, Public Works - $206,758 ($162,970)
• · Debra Rose, Dpty City Manager - $192,994 ($147,870)
• · James Wren – Public Safety - $151,118 ($111,350)

What’s also missing in the Budget report is how much these individuals get in memberships paid for, training courses paid for, auto allowances, phone allowances, travel expenses paid, etc. The Budget simply lists these are group expenses.

CITY MANAGER’S MESSAGE

The budget report starts with a multi-page report from the City Manager highlighting all the good things that happened in the City, with nary a reference to the problems we encountered (e.g., rebuilding Saddleback Ranch Rd, adding the missing disabled entrance for Tamarisk Park, the costs of the recall, etc.). Moreover there is no mention of the City’s goals and strategic planning in conjunction with the budget. The Manager notes some challenges –

• · Getting the Civic and Senior Centers built
• · Absorbing the “new neighborhoods” and 13,000+ new residents
• · Improving 10 City parks
• · Possibly updating the General Plan
• · Modernizing our technology
• · Continuing to deal with the traffic problems
• · Dealing with the growth in use of community services

I expect in a Budget report that the good news and the bad news would be presented. It doesn’t help us to ignore the problems and only focus on the good things. Imagine if you went for your annual physical exam and your physician only told you about the good things.

REPORT FORMAT

The budget report is enormous (over 200 pages) and filled with lots of information as well as figures. Despite the plethora of data, it’s not easy to see what we are doing, how well we are doing it, and whether or not the dollars are being spent wisely. Part of the problem is that items appear to be listed in isolation. It’s hard to assess the value of any specific project. For example - "How well are we doing meeting the needs of our Senior citizens?" "Do we need to spend more on the senior program, or can monies be diverted to the program for teens?" Try as hard as you might, these types of questions are impossible to answer.

PUBLIC/PRIVATE COOPERATION

Also missing from the report are private/public ventures which could bring more revenue to the City or reduce our expenses. For example, would PetsMart like to sponsor the new dog park in Portola Hills? Would some of our major corporations like to get naming privileges on the new performing arts center, or individual rooms within the new civic and senior centers? I’m going to suggest we set up an ad hoc committee to work on this.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on August 13 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.