[ From: "City gets first look at future budget gap" by Eric Lindberg, Daily Sound, Sept. 9, 2009 - please view original article for full text and comments. ]

With the stagnant economy continuing to drain on local tax revenues while salaries and benefits continue to increase, Santa Barbara city leaders will have to keep their budget knives sharp in order to deal with a projected $5 million shortfall next year.

City officials, who are already dealing with red ink in the current budget despite carving out more than $10 million two months ago...

... got a clear look at what a $5 million shortfall would mean to specific services provided by the city as each department head outlined various strategies to deal with the budget gap.

With a clear directive from city leaders not to reduce sworn officers, the police department is looking at giving up extra rental space, eliminating the sobering center, cutting the DARE and PAL programs, or shifting “community policing” officers back to standard patrol...

In the fire department, options for closing its share of the budget shortfall include cutting vehicle replacement funding, reducing truck staffing from four firefighters to three, or cutting several positions including a training captain...

Many of those proposals, both in the fire and police departments, did not sit well with city leaders, who seemed opposed to hitting public safety any harder in the next round of budget deliberations.

“We are going to get to a level of cutting vital services that people in the city, understandably, are going to be upset about,” Councilmember Das Williams said.

Noting that city officials have spent most of their time focused on the expense side of the equation, Williams suggested looking into ways to boost revenues to avoid cutting into police, fire or youth recreation programs.

“To me, doing something like a medicinal marijuana tax similar to the city of Oakland that passed by 80 percent is something we really need to be looking at,” he said.

New taxes on medical marijuana or single-use grocery bags, or increases in bed taxes or the city’s utility users tax, would require voter approval, not to mention a unanimous vote of the council to place the measure on the ballot.

Other budget strategies brought up by city officials yesterday included closing the library on Mondays, cutting into parks and recreation programs, eliminating six to seven positions in the community development department, and not televising all board and commission meetings.

City officials took care to emphasize that the measures discussed yesterday are merely preliminary proposals that are not finalized in any sense...

... Since 2000, the city’s expenses have grown on average by 6.4 percent each year, he said, while revenues grew by 5.9 percent annually.

During the same period, salaries and benefits costs have grown 9.2 percent — increasing from 69 percent of total expenses in 2000 to 77 percent last year...