SANTA MARIA, Calif. (KEYT) - The Santa Maria City Council cut into a $25.1 million deficit on Tuesday night by approving a number of a number of "budget amendments."
"The staff brought for the City Council recommendations to reduce, the budget," said Chuen Wu, Santa Maria Assistant City Manager. "The council approved the recommendations, so I feel like we're making progress on addressing the city's budget deficit and yesterday was kind of a big step towards that."
Among the proposals that were approved by councilmembers were a number of capital improvement projects that must now be delayed, cancelled, or funded with another source.
Some of those projects include the $3.629 million expansion of Fire Station 1, as well as well several park improvements, such as pausing $1 million for the creation of two new pocket parks.
In addition, the city will continue to operate with a smaller work staff as hiring to fill open positions will now be paused indefinitely.
"There were 24 full-time positions that have been vacant," said Wu. "Many of these positions have been vacant a while and so we decided to remove the budget allocations for those positions. There were also part-time hours that we're going to remove off the books, and so we're really trying to be efficient and lean with the people that we have, but still try and provide the same level of services."
With the first round of budget amendments now approved, City Council is now looking at new ways to increase future revenue streams.
"We're exploring potential revenue options," said Wu. "We've enlisted a polling services to just kind of gauge community sentiment on the potential of whether it's, sales tax or a parcel tax, or rental tax, those are options that are being explored, but we want to get a sense of what the community feels and we also want to have direction from our council."
"It's a discussion that we're having at the moment and we're having those conversations within the next couple of months. Everything that we're talking about really has lead into the next, budget that we intend to adopt for '26 through '28."
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