The Hermosa Beach City Council approved a $32 million balanced budget for the upcoming fiscal year at Tuesday’s meeting.
The city’s overall financial outlook is improving. Revenue projections for the next year exceed expenditures by seven percent. Still, the city is proceeding with caution.
“One of the Council’s goals to achieve by 2018 is to become a “High Performing City Providing 1st Class Services,”’ City Manager Tom Bakaly wrote in the report. “This is of large significance to the budget because we need to identify our service levels, determine what they cost and measure how well we are performing those services as compared to other similar cities.”
To balance recent budgets, the city was forced to make work force reductions of 18 percent over the past eight years as well as re-bid major contracts and reconfigure public safety retirement into a “two-tier” system. As a result, with a more robust local economy, the budget estimates overall revenues will outstrip expenditures by 7 percent. The budget calls for 12 additional full-time and part-time city employees as well as an increase in private contract services. The city also plans to replace 15 vehicles, including a Fire Engine and ambulance.
The city council refused to allocate $9,000 to the budget for a city e-newsletter and questioned the $21,481 cost of downtown area steam cleaning. The matter will be revisited at a future meeting. ER
