City Council Meeting Roundup: Parking Fees, Setting Budget Priorities, Contract Proposals

Not surprisingly, last night's Half Moon Bay City Council meeting centered around finding ways to balance its budget. The theme underlay discussions to implementing parking fees, weighing the feasibility of what could be called creative cost-cutting methods for fiscal year 2011-2012, and talking about bids for police services (now due to arrive by March 4, according to Interim Police Chief Lee Violett) and recreation services (bids received; for more details, read related story ).

City officials have tallied Half Moon Bay's deficit at $500,000, and estimated that this amount could grow to over $1 million in the next (2011-2012) fiscal year if action is not taken to control costs or increase revenues.

As a result, the city kicked off an effort in late January to solicit ideas from council members, staff, and the community to brainstorm ideas and strategies on specific ways to gain more revenue or reduce costs. 

POPLAR BEACH PARKING FEES

One of those ideas brought forth by councilmembers was to implement a parking fee at Poplar Beach. As expected, the fee program was approved last night 5-0. According to Mo Sharma, city engineer, the new required payment will be enforced once the city installs a parking pay station by the end of the month. To see the approved fee schedule, click here.

Councilmembers said that the parking fees would offset city maintenance costs, including the costs of picking up litter.

"It's heavily used by people over the hill," Councilmember Marina Fraser said. "Over years we've issues with litter and public waste containers being abused...the whole area we have to maintain – this is a direct pocket cost to the city, so we need to recoup those costs and have the area look like it’s supposed to look," she said. 

"We can’t continue to give free services at that location," said Councilmember John Muller.

Money raised from the parking fees will go into the general fund, according to City Manager Laura Snideman.

PRIORITIZING COUNCIL AND STAFF BUDGET SUGGESTIONS

Finance Manager Jan Cooke shared how city staff are prioritizing which suggestions to take action on, based on the many suggestions given to them earlier this year.

Out of the entire group of suggestions, Cooke said that staff identified 30 ideas that "we believe have value to city...what’s important the is return on investment," she said.

Cooke's method was to rank suggestions based on ease of implementation and potential of generating high amounts of revenue (>$100,000). One strategy rose to the to the top as an action item that could be implemented quickly as well as yield relatively large potential savings: the withdrawal of contributions to the city's vehicle maintenance and risk management internal service funds.

City council members were presented with strategies and suggestions categorized in the remaining three groups - which Cooke presented as being a lower priority due to either a lower investment return or a greater time investment needed (beyond the 2011-2012 fiscal year) for implementation.

City staff sought feedback from councilmembers as to whether they agreed with this assessment, along with their input on setting priorities.

Councilmembers generally agreed with staff, and added their own suggestions, including Vice Mayor Allan Alifano, who said "we're just hurting ourselves" because the city still handles paper documents, while other cities work with digital documents.

"My sense is to move forward with the easy initiatives and continue look at more long-term [projects] that take several years to initiate," Alifano said.

"We're looking at full cost recovery," said Councilmember Marina Fraser. "People talk that governments should run like a business - not to make profit but to operate and function within our means," she said.

Snideman cautioned that the city would not want to charge the full cost for all services for public safety reasons, using the example of a residential water heater inspection. "Otherwise the cost could be a deterrent," she said.

Mayor Naomi Patridge said she thought the strategy of park maintenance should be moved up to higher priority. "It could be part of the strategy to create a foundation and seek sponsorships," she said.

"We’re talking about maintaing and ," she said. "I don’t want to have that sit back; I want it to move forward. Community members are eager to start helping and I think this is one area people will help," she said.

CONTRACT PROPOSALS

See this story published on Half Moon Bay Patch for the full update on the status for bidding on the city's police, recreation, and public access television station services.

Correction 3/8: The last word in the following sentence was changed from "expenditures" to "revenues" to reflect the correct meaning of the sentence: City officials have tallied Half Moon Bay's deficit at $500,000, and estimated that this amount could grow to over $1 million in the next (2011-2012) fiscal year if action is not taken to control costs or increase revenues.