CITRUS HEIGHTS, Calif. — The Citrus Heights City Council will have some tough decisions to weigh as it balances its budget. With not much revenue coming into the city due to coronavirus pandemic, the 2020-21 General Fund budget that was adopted previously would push the city even further into deficit.
"We find ourselves now in a place and a time where we have to make some difficult decisions with our financial future," city manager Christopher Boyd said during a recent city council special session.
Certain city services and departments were already working with limited resources due to the pandemic, but Boyd said that the only option is to make more cuts to areas like policing, public services, and street maintenance and repair. The city council went over ways to balance the budget at the special session meeting, breaking down the previous year's budget and available funds.
"Last week’s study session with our city council involved reviewing three potential strategies to balance our city’s budget," Citrus Heights communications officer Nichole Baxter said. "In 2020, we rounded out the city’s largest engagement effort in history, to help us gauge the community’s priorities – and we will keep that important feedback in mind as we look to reduce staffing and services to meet our budget."
The majority (76%) of the 2020-21 General Fund went to personnel and the remaining one-fourth to operations. Police make up 66% of the entire budget, while City Hall takes 34% and other areas like community development and administrative services makes up the rest. As such, cuts would be made to these larger areas of the budget. City Hall has already undergone some reductions in areas such as staff training and community engagement. It has delayed services in other areas such as processing development projects and updating human resources legal mandates.
Citrus Heights does project a small surplus from the previous two-year budget, due in large part to the city receiving $1 million in CARES Act funding. The surplus is also due to the fact that the city has 28 vacancies within the police department and nine vacancies in City Hall, all intentionally unfilled.
Citrus Heights Police Chief Ron Lawrence spoke during special session, illustrating some of the operations and services that are currently reduced or suspended to meet the city's budgetary needs at this time. Though the operations of the Citrus Heights Police Department have been reduced, the department has not had to implement any layoffs.
"I want to just take a minute to thank the brave men and women of the Citrus Heights Police Department who work tirelessly to keep this community safe, and despite working with extremely low staffing levels, and while we're doing fewer things than we did before the budget deficit, it has in no way diminished their professionalism or their desire to protect and serve this community," Chief Lawrence said.
Some future police service cuts in the FY 21-22 and FY 22-23 budget would limit non-violent investigations like fraud and property crime, according to Chief Lawrence. Investigations of online sex-predators and human trafficking would halt, and Citrus Heights police would have to devote less resources to DUI enforcement.
"It’s important our residents know that while police services are going to be streamlined, the police department will continue to respond to emergencies as always," Baxter said.
