SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Mayor Todd Gloria announced his plans Tuesday to merge seven city departments with others and lay off the city’s highest-paid worker, saving a grand total of around $5 million. As SDSU professor Brian Adams points out, there’s still around $250 million left.
“Ultimately there will have to be some layoffs. There is no way the city will be able to close the budget without any type of layoffs, other than the ones that have already been announced,” Adams said.
“Why do you think he’s delaying those service cuts?”
“Well, those are the hardest cuts to make.”
Adams expects upcoming layoffs to shrink hours for local libraries and recreation centers. The city council also discussed more metered parking spaces and increased hours of enforcement, a new trash collection fee, and charging admission to major city-run events.
“I think there will be some real impact on the day to day lives of San Diegans.”
The Mayor wants to prevent cutbacks on homeless services, infrastructure, public safety and housing initiatives. Adams says it would be hard to protect San Diego Police and fire departments.
“I can’t imagine there won't be impact to those. There has to be some sort of cuts to police and fire. It’s such a big part of the budget.”
So what got San Diego into this hole? Gloria says it’s partly a result of the failure of Measure E: a one-cent sales tax that narrowly failed in November. ABC10News collected data that points to other reasons, like the hiring of 1,300 new city employees in the last four years alongside pay raises. The mayor defended those new hires, saying they've been fixing streetlights and repaving roads. Adams says the City has a large backlog of deferred infrastructure maintenance and collects less taxes per capita relative to other large cities.
“This budget hole wasn’t created yesterday or last year. It's something that’s been a long time in the making, to find ourselves in this position.”
The city is holding budget workshops in the spring. The council has to adopt a budget by June.
