Manhattan Beach adds six positions yet saves money
The proposed budget for the City of Manhattan Beach for the next fiscal year adds six new positions but realizes an overall savings of $200,000 in staffing by eliminating two management positions. The $75 million budget projects a $700,000 surplus.
“These are boots on the ground to get the work done, not management positions,” City Manager Bruce Moe told council at the May 1 meeting when he introduced the budget.
The new positions include a senior management analyst, a senior financial analyst, an electrician, a public works inspector, an assistant traffic engineer, and an administrative clerk within the police department. The two management positions cut are assistant city manager and economic vitality manager. Both were eliminated, at council’s urging, late last year.
The two analyst positions are, in part, made necessary both by the loss of the two management positions and by two big technological upgrades that are also part of the proposed budget — new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, and a new land management permitting system.
Acting finance director Steve Charelian described the new ERP as a “fundamental change to the way we do business” and noted that it replaces a 22-year-old software system. The cost, $718,000, and draws from two funds outside the general fund — an Information Technology fund and an enterprise fund. The new permitting system comes at a cost of $408,000 and will integrate with the ERP while also providing residents online access to some types of permitting.
“They are both large in scale and intense projects,” Charelian told council.
Moe, in an interview, said the new systems are “miles ahead of where we are now.” The older systems are decades old and no longer supported by updates. The ERP will touch nearly everything city government does, while the permitting system will provide better customer service.
“The goal has always been self-service portals for certain permitting uses, or to have people able to see where they’re permitting or plan check processes are at,” Moe said. He noted that inspectors will be able to file reports from the field.
Both the public works inspector and electrician positions formerly existed and were trimmed during the Great Recession. The electrician, Charelian said, will actually be more cost-effective, because it will reduce the city’s reliance on outside electricians. The inspector position, he said, is a measure of the city ’s robust building activity.
“Residential and commercial construction activity has grown and there is a need for a second inspector,” Charelian said. “It is simply more work than one person could do, and this was eliminated during the recession.”
The assistant traffic engineer will help the city’s overburdened traffic engineer, Erik Zandvliet. The department has also requested that a part-time administrative clerk upgraded to full time, at a cost of about $6,000 per year, in order to digitize records.
The new administrative clerk position requested for the police department is intended to address a big uptick in public information requests, which have increased from 883 in 2016 to more than 1,800 last year.
“I think a lot of it is a function of the age of social media, body-worn cameras, and all the scrutiny police-type work now receives,” Moe said.
The additional clerk is expected to reduce costs by reducing overtime.
The new positions, if approved by council, will bring the number of city employees to 306, up from 302 last year and 278 a decade ago.
“I am keenly aware of the sensitivity at this time this organization and community have to the full-time employee headcount and the resulting impacts to pension and benefit costs,” Moe wrote in his budget message. “But those factors need to be balanced with service demands and the effective operation of a responsive municipal government.”
On the revenue side of the equation, property taxes remain by far the largest part of the budget. This year is projected to see a healthy uptick, from $31.2 million this year to a projected $32.6 next (a 4.5 percent increase). The second largest source of revenue are sales taxes, which have been largely stagnant, in keeping with a trend in the overall economy in which online shopping has displaced bricks-and-mortar. Sales tax revenue for the city was $9 million this year, and projects to be $9.1 both next year, and the following year. Transit Occupancy Tax revenues were at $4.25 million this year and are expected to grow to $4.5 million next year.
Moe, as he frequently does, referred to a “Mitzner-ism,” one of the sayings of 45-year finance department veteran Henry Mitzner regarding the local economy: “When it’s bad out there, it’s good here; when it’s good out there, it’s great here.” He noted that the new financial analyst position will be helpful in terms of succession planning in the unlikely case Mitzner ever retires.
“You never know, one day he may decide he’d like to volunteer even more hours at the Museum of Natural History,” Moe said. “In the meantime, his old adage still applies.”
Final consideration and adoption of the budget will take place at the June 19 council meeting.