It’s crunch time again and the City of Sacramento is now seeking public input on the upcoming 2011-2012 budget with an online survey. The City is also hosting a community Budget Open House at City Hall on Saturday, April 9. Attendees are invited to stop by anytime between 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. to learn about the City’s budget and provide input on budget priorities and solutions. Results from the survey will be presented to the City Council in early May as part of the proposed budget process.
The open house will take place in the New City Hall lobby at 915 I Street in downtown Sacramento.
Sacramento is suffering from the prolonged economic recession. As a result, the City is anticipating a budget deficit of $35 to $40 million. This projected shortfall represents the need to reduce the $237 million net General Fund operating costs by nearly 20 percent. Although the City has initiated several budget-saving strategies over the last several years, next fiscal year’s budget will represent the fifth consecutive year of budget reductions because expenditures are growing at a faster rate than available revenues to pay for those services.
An online “Budget Input Survey” has been posted to the City’s web page, http://www.cityofsacramento.org/, and will be open through April 23. For more information about the city budget, download the Budget 101 fact sheet.
They better focus on public safety because I see many cities like Sacramento start to see higher crime rates as the economy continues to stall or goes backward into a double dip recession. When you include the extreme cutbacks the states about to make on social services, many people will start to do things (crimes) that they would never think of doing before just to get by. These are the same people who have gotten use to the government paying them to just sit around for years and years. With both continued high unemployment and extreme cut backs to social service, I would expect inner cities to take a turn for the worse.
ReplyDeleteAll you have to do is look back 35 years ago to see how American cities turned to crap during the 1970’s. Violent crime rates were at their highest during this time period and inner cities were really in the dumps. Prepare for the worst, history tends to repeat it’s self especially when no one thinks it can happen again.
I would agree, things do not look good.
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