(Sept. 14, 2016, 8:55 a.m.) -- As seen LIVE on LBREPORT.com, a little over 90 days after LB voters approved raising LB's sales tax ("Measure A") to 10%, LB taxpayers saw the results at the Sept. 13 City Council meeting. Councilmembers mainly approved the city management/Mayor proposed budget recommendations but quarreled for several hours over how to allocate some sums from the "blank check" measure in FY17. Councilmembers also voted without dissent to approve budget changes advanced by 5th district Councilwoman Stacy Mungo (the Mayor's chosen chair for the Council's Budget Oversight Committee), some of which hadn't been discussed or described in detail publicly before the Council's voted actions.
Vice Mayor Richardson made a motion to delay a decision on restoring Rescue 12 to see if additional city revenue would result from November statewide, countywide and a LB election (marijuana and transportation items), and got a publicly stated commitment by Mayor Garcia to restore Rescue 12 regadless of the election outcome with some plan to be devised. . Below are some of the following net results: [Scroll down for further.] |
Councilwoman Mungo had no voting powers beyond those of other Councilmembers, but because Mayor Garcia had named her to chair the Council's Budget Oversight Committee, he let her present the Committee's budget recommendations, which included a recommendation to approve his budgetr recommendations. This then let her decide (since she made the Council motion) which, if any, "friendly amendments" by other Councilmembers she would accept. Other Councilmembers had the right to make their own motions...but after the public Council failure of the Austin/Price recommendation to restore Rescue 12 (tapping infrastructure funds that had been recommended by the manager/Mayor), most didn't. An exception was Vice Mayor Richardson, who voted against the Austin/Price Rescue 12 restoration motion and instead moved to wait until November elections on state, county and local ballot measures that might bring additional revenue to City Hall before restoring Rescue 12; Richardson later received the Mayor's publicly stated commitment to restore Rescue 12 regardless of the outcome of those eletcions. Councilman Supernaw received nearly nothing for having supported Measure A (including co-proposing with Mungo a so-called Citizens Oversight Committee to oversee its spending. After reiterating reasons on the merits why restoring Engine 17 to Stearns Park fire station 17 would bring benefits to his district (which has no operating fire station) and beyond, he received no audible support from any Councilmembers to restore Engine 17. However the Council did approve his proposal to use fines from JetBlue late night flights (if legally possible) to restore Sunday hours at the Los Altos library. Mayor Garcia directed, without Council dissent that could have overriden his decision and despite objections by taxpayer Ann Cantrell -- to only allow public testimony before items to change the budget were presented by the Mayor's Budget Oversight Committee chair Mungo or others, effectively preventing the public from testifying on Councilmember-proposed changes. No speakers testified at the Sept. 13 Council budget session from any organized neighborhood or business groups on increasing police or fire public safety budgeted items (apart from the individual neighborhood group president from Mungo's district supporting Mungo's proposal indicated above.) There was no public testimony from LB's police or firefighter unions. Reps from the LB Public Library Foundation commended the Council for restoring some Sunday library hours. Immediately prior to the public Council meeting, Councilmembers held closed session on negotiations with multiple city employee unions, including police and fire who were the two largest funders of campaign for Measure A "blank check" sales tax hike; budget as proposed doesn't publicly set aside sums for raises, which taxpayers will pay from some source(s).
Earlier in the day in the Council's Budget Oversight Committee (Mungo, Austin, Price), Councilman Austin, backed by Price, proposed to shift roughly $1.1 mil from Measure A infrastructure sums to restore Rescue 12 in NLB. City mgm't staffer Lea Eriksen said restoring Rescue 12 would require identifying $3+ million from other Measure A funds, which would reduce some of the items Mayor/manager proposed for infrastructure. Mungo sided with management, said she supports restoring Rescue 12 but only if Austin could come up with $3 mil from other sources, said eliminating currently listed infrastructure projects would leave 5th district with most streets for repairs the worst impacted...and blamed her predecessor [Schipske] for not addressing backlog of street repairs. When Austin and Price voted to recommend using Measure A funds to restore Rescue 12, Mungo refused to support it, saying she wouldn't vote to recommend an unbalanced budget. Price contended it's not unbalanced because Measure A sums are expected to continue...and Price added an amendment, supported by Austin, to shift $700,000 from "wage enforcement" (as part of minimum wage actions that Council approved a week earlier over her objections) to instead restore police officers. Price called Council majority voted action a week earlier for wage enforcement (without knowing if City has legal authority to conduct such actions) was "throwing money down the toilet." Later, after Council majority voted 6-3 (including Richardson) to reject Austin-Price proposal to restore Rescue 12, Price apologized for her choice of words.
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