Monterey tasked with balancing $10 million budget shortfall

The city of Monterey is brainstorming ideas on where to find $10 million.

That’s the budget hole the city is currently sitting in.
They held a special meeting tonight to go over 25 different ways that could make up the shortfall.

“I'm happy that we're in a position to be able to do something about it, and having the foresight to address it now and not kick the can down the road into the future,” said Mayor Tyller Williamson.

The deficit is for the current fiscal year which runs through next june - leaving the city some runway before that $10 million needs to be ironed out.

The mayor flipped way back in the history books to explain the deficit.

“When the city transitioned from a mainly fish fishing industry to a hospitality industry, there was a lot of revenue coming into the city of monterey. And past councils were eager to find ways of spending that money."

One of twelve options deemed ‘highly feasible’ is program cuts, specifically halting rental assistance or special event support, but everything is technically on the table at this point.

"The reality is, is that the ability for us to do that and be successful is going to be really challenging. There's going to be so much pushback."

Mayor Williamson doesn’t want to make cuts.
But there is one public service that is pencilled in to lose up to $6 million towards making up the deficit.

“The neighborhood community improvement program. That's another cherished program. I know that's going to be a hard conversation, but what was enlightening to me was to hear some of the members of the cip committee come up here today and say, hey, we're good with the city. Taking some of the funding. Leave us some of it so that we can continue doing our programs. But we want to help contribute towards addressing some of the city's needs.”

The Monterey Bay Aquarium was the focus of a couple proposals. It only pays one dollar in rent per year right now, and the city believes it’s 'highly feasible' to start charging them between half a million and a million dollars a year.

The mayor said some of the options that make the most sense to him are tax-related ballot measures.

"Measure g, which is a general sales tax. We're already paying that. Why don't we consider just extending that? There's that 0.375% that we're not charging in sales tax right now, that we have that additional ability to charge. Why don't we consider doing that?"

Mayor Williamson said he doesn’t want to burden residents and interestingly - the brunt of sales taxes in monterey are borne by outsiders.

Sixty-two percent of our sales tax is paid for by visitors. So we need to be able to maximize, that, that revenue source and, that those by themselves can bring in $7 million.

According to public comment, there’s still some work to be done on making that strong case for taxes.

"Let's buy ourselves a little time here too, because really, we're already as californians, paying some of the highest taxes in the country," said demetrius kastros.

And business owners might agree.

“many business owners will say, 'well the way to reduce the budget deficit is to raise more revenue by having more economic activity rather than just going to tax increases as a basic solution,'” said Kevin Dayton with the Monterey Peninsula Chamber of Commerce.

Another of the many ideas is a first responder fee. The city could charge health or car insurance companies when city departments respond to emergencies or accidents.

The police and fire departments themselves are slated to be safe from cuts.

The council has a week to organize thoughts on each of the presented potential solutions.
It will meet again on Tuesday to go over the most popular options.