Budgeting priorities and General Fund spending

By Donald J "Don" Greene

The City Council of Escondido needs members who will have the vision to keep Escondido moving into the future by maintaining essential services, not cutting them.

The top two sources of revenue for the city are property taxes and sales taxes. While property tax is the more consistent of the two sources of revenue, sales tax revenue has a history of ups and downs. To compensate for this fluctuation in revenue, the city has adopted a policy of creating a General Fund Reserve account. Optimally, the city should be funneling revenue into this reserve account during surplus (revenue over budget) years and using the reserves in deficit years (revenue below budget). Just as you and I use our savings accounts for overdraft protections and when we need an infusion of cash, the General Fund reserve account is there to provide that added protection during the hard times.

The current council majority has adopted a policy of not using the reserve accounts to cover our expenses in these deficit years. To accommodate this policy decision, we have cut services and funding of outside agencies so that we can declare that we have only spent what we've earned. As a result, we have closed a branch library, lost police officers and firefighters, stopped funding important agencies in the city such as the Escondido History Center, Escondido Education COMPACT, Escondido Arts Partnership and many others. We have also cut out various recreation programs while raising the rates on others.

The NC Times reported that there have been budget surpluses for the last 10 quarters. Specifically, the last quarter Escondido saw a 13.4% surplus, translating to approximately $2 Million dollars. The city of Escondido could have resisted the cuts that it made, used the reserve accounts - which is the reason they exist - and saved a branch library and saved many utilized recreation programs by having the foresight to spend some of the reserves and then replace it with this reported surplus.

I will work to change our budgeting priorities and institute a formulaic method of utilizing the General Fund reserves (both funding it and spending it) while focusing on maintaining essential services that the residents of Escondido expect.