Salinas Plan making progress toward battling deficit

Officials say it is time to chip away at the multi-million dollar deficit in the City of Salinas.

The city is looking at an increase in deficits exceeding $10 million a year by fiscal year 2027. That is a total of over $60 million over the next 10 years. To prevent the financial collapse of the city, the Salinas Plan has a list of 32 recommended initiatives that would help the city remain stable.

City economists say on its current path, Salinas faces a steady erosion of existing services without any extra resources available to help ease the housing crisis. And it is why some departments are getting asked to switch things around.

“It’s actually much worse if you look at a recession scenario,” said Salinas Economic Development Manager Andrew Myrick.

When cities are faced with deficits, they go through a financial boot camp so to speak to save money. The Salinas Plan is the city’s attempt to help lighten the burden of these money woes. The list of 32 initiatives together would help the city become debt-free and maintain core services, according to the staff report.

It would also identify additional funds to address the housing crisis.

“Some of it looks at organizational efficiencies, employee costs, benefits, salaries, etc,” said Myrick.

One “organizational efficiency” is hitting the Salinas Police Department’s word processing division, where staff type up police reports for their records.

The city now wants police to look into dictation software that could help save time and money.

“That allows for those employees that are currently word processing to be put to other uses,” said Myrick.

Other initiatives include combining city animal services with the county’s, reducing money loss from the downtown parking garage and Sherwood Hall and increasing revenues like the hotel tax.

The city says it is tough to project revenues and deficits over 10 years, but they have to work with the information they have now to prevent disaster.

“We’re trying to keep layoffs as the last resort of balancing the budget, but that means we need to find new ways of doing things,” said Myrick.

Next Tuesday, staff will present their progress on the Salinas Plan to the city council, who will then see if the recommendations are working or need adjusting.