(The Center Square) – The San Diego City Council approved a $2.15 billion budget for the new fiscal year after modifying the mayor’s budget.
The council voted 7-2 for a budget that reversed the mayor’s proposed cuts on parks, recreation centers and libraries. Instead, the budget proposes new spending and funding restorations as an alternative way to increase revenue.
“We’ve heard so loud and clear from the community about what is most important to you,” Councilmember Sean Elo Rivera said during the council meeting Tuesday. “Your parks, your rec-centers, your libraries and what those mean to you all.”
Elo Rivera also said he pushed back on the process of approving a budget because he wanted to protect the community’s wants. “… before we got to a place of, really significant and painful across-the-board cuts, I thought it was important for us to lean in to all the resources the city can and should have, and protect you all from those cuts.”
There are four primary sources of revenue that are proposed in the budget: parking fees at Balboa Park, parking fees at the San Diego Zoo, digitizing billboards and credit card transaction fees at parking meters. Together they total around $10 million.
Charles Modica, the city’s independent budget analyst, voiced concern with the new sources of revenue because he said they were introduced to him and his office three hours prior to the council meeting in a budget memo, not giving his office the opportunity to vet the amounts. Therefore, Modica said, there is risk in relying on them for the new fiscal year budget.
“If they do not come through, we will again be needing to make cuts to city expenditures at the mid-year,” Modica said during the city council meeting.
The budget also proposes $2.7 million in cuts to management positions. Some of these cuts are directed at the mayor’s office, proposing to eliminate a confidential secretary position budgeted at $133,000 and two deputy chief operating officer jobs budgeted at $400,000 each, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. The Center Square reached out to the mayor’s office for a comment but did not receive one.
The approved budget is not set in stone as the mayor has line-item veto power, allowing him to eliminate spending and make changes. The council, however, can still override his vetoes with a six-person vote.
“Over the next several days, the Mayor and his team will closely review the Council’s amendments to ensure the final budget meets the level of fiscal responsibility this moment demands, especially given the current economic uncertainty and global instability,” Director of Communications Rachel Laing wrote in a statement on behalf of the mayor’s office.
The mayor has five days to either approve the budget or make line-item vetoes.
