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Except for a few financial hiccups, the city of Pleasanton will close its fiscal year budget June 30 again in a strong position with the next 12 months projected to be even better.
In a report to the City Council Tuesday night, Finance Director Emily Wagner said the city’s revenues for FY 2011/12 should total $89,693,904, slightly more than $40,000 better than her projections showed when the current two-year budget was approved a year ago.
Property taxes for the fiscal year are projected at $48,681,990, nearly $700,000 less than expected, but increases over projections in other taxes and fees during the year made up the difference.
“The decreases in property taxes of $659,570 are mainly attributable to decreases in commercial property assessed values,” she said.
Sales taxes showed a gain of $320,180 over her projections last June, totaling $19.4 million as the economy showed slight improvements in the retail and auto sales categories. The increase would have been better but for the need to reimburse the city of Livermore $477,132 for sales taxes mistakenly sent to Pleasanton several years ago for sales taxes collected at Vanstar’s now-closed computer stores that were located in both cities.
Other increases over initial projections for FY 2011-12 includes $485,034 in development services fees due to increased building activity, ending the year at $2,886,689, and in hotel/motel business license taxes of $631,202 due to improvement in those sectors of the economy, ending the year at $3,450,000.
Due to freezes on hiring and employee wages during the year, personnel costs also decreased by $453,112 to a year-end total of $67,832,701. Still, the city moves into FY 20112/13 with personnel costs representing 77.7% of the General Fund budget.
“That’s too high and I want to work to reduce the percentage,” Councilman Jerry Thorne said Tuesday night.
Callippe Preserve, the city’s municipal golf course, continued to see its projected revenue dip during the year as golfers held back on the number of times they played over budgeted expectations. Revenues at the course totaled $4,132,255, down $247,745 from budgeted income for the year. Wagner said the city has $2 million reserved n the General Fund for golf course debt service which is sufficient to pay two years of debt service costs.
What is the unfunded pension liability? I didn’t see any discussion of that. This PR blurb is a joke.
Any discussion that omits unsustainable union-backed activities – in short – unfunded pension and salary liabilities, leaves itself open to a flood of questions. Who is behind the budget projection? Why are they lying the way they do? What politicians need to be swept out of office? Without a pre-flood sweeping, we’ll be washed away under a huge deluge of mountainous debt. We have to wake up the populace and pare away at the elite union classes who have hoarded so much money during this Obama-created recession. Here comes the flood!
So even with hiring cuts and freezes, we’re only $40k to the good? Dint sound too good to me. Bloated personnel and pensions and only one city council person corncerned. Don’t bode well for our town.
It would have been good to see how the liabilities are tracking (pensions, retiree medical, etc.). Since CalPERS rates will be going up a little because of their changes, not sure if that is in the calculations plus even CalPERS is adding to our pension liability since they are phasing in the increases over time instead of charging what they should be now, plus they are doing their calculations on an assumed rate of return that is less than their own actuarial studies show; indicating they are increasing the liabilities even more.
You can also see that street maintenance is not happening because of the additional employee costs. Drive around town and you will see these temporary patched roads (Valley by Stanley, Vineyard in front of Western Garden Nursery, …). People need to know that there is a direct correlation between employee costs and services provided. As employee costs go up, like they have, there is less money to provide the services.
This good news is terrible! I blame the unions!!
P.S. I DON’T WANT TO PAY MY TAXES!!!
Thanks to he PD for stepping up and doing your part…let’s make sure we now hold the drones who demanded change to the same standard. They must now deal with the lack of certain services and hiring freezes while shutting their mouths…..here that Steve..you and your drones got the heroes to pay their own pensions at what cost? Now shut your pie hole and reap the consequences.
The PD hasn’t stepped up unless you consider they’ll eventually begin paying a small portion of their check toward their own very generous pension which pays over 98% of salary as early as age 50. And they can also count their uniform allowance as income. They also get paid overtime without working overtime.
These perks are wrong, very costly, unfair, and are driving the push toward increased taxes. The middle class is being strangled by the need to increase taxes to fund unsustainable pensions and retiree medical benefits for fifty something retirees – that are in excess of 100K.
We can’t afford to pay these exorbinant pensions to public employees nor do they provide enough value to justify this obscene level of retirement compensation. The Pleasanton employee payroll exceeds the General Fund budget of many bay area cities with a population of 100K+. That’s crazy! Pleasanton isn’t really doing a great job of managing their money; they just have more money than most cities and that masks their mis-management.
The PUSD board must now deal with a trainwreck of its own making which is ( three of them anyway (Laursen, Grant, Bowser) ) continuing to take funds out of the classroom and instead:
+ using the funds for hiring and rehiring administrators with fancy perks such as **car allowances**
+ spending a few hundred bucks an hour per consultant/contractor/coach/change agent on the army of consultants
+ doing studies and plans loaded with a fusillade of corporate and educational gobbledygook and buzzwords – educational sustainability anyone ? –
that do no purpose other than draining the budget and making the leadership look feckless on top of reckless.
“That’s too high and I want to work to reduce the percentage,” Councilman Jerry Thorne said Tuesday night.
That is Jerry’s campaign voice, any other year he would be doing the good old boy back slap.
This is pollyanna without including the unfunded retirement debt.
Cut the budget by reducing too many Pleasanton cops with nothing to do but harass citizens.
Too many cops. Too many public school teachers. Too many fire fighters. We need more bartenders, hedge fund managers and bankers who contribute additive value to our economy. The math is clear. The prediction is for unmitigated disaster once the tsunami hits and hits hard. How do fire fighters put out a flood? How do cops ticket raging waters swirling through our city’s streets? Can you name one public school teacher who can tell us how to stanch the spigots of water spewing through the fissures of our already Obama-weakened political economy? I wish someone would attempt to answer my questions!
“This is the captain of the Titanic. Please do not be alarmed. You have nothing to worry about. We did not hit an iceberg. Now enjoy the music and drinks are on the house”.
Faced with these exorbinant costs, its fun to try to imagine our ticket giving police and incompitent union teachers attempt to stop the Titanic from going DOWN. Look at all the peachwork on our city streets. What do you think its covering up? Meanwhile, like Arnod says on another line, the politicians are sitting in the bathtub playing rubber ducky while the drane is clogged and the water keeps running. Nothing to worry about hear folks.
Shame on you Pleasanton Weekly for providing such incomplete and misleading coverage of such an important topic. Do you pride yourself for being such a tool for a public-union controlled City Council?
Maybe one day you will learn to actually do investigative reporting and challenge the information provided to you? Maybe you could look into how well the city is doing against its unfunded liability goals. Maybe you could look at some basic service metrics (e.g. miles of road repaved) to understand the sacrifices this community continues to make in order that public employees aren’t asked to contribute much.
You’ve promised me for nearly a year to conduct an indepth investigative reporting effort to increase the community’s understanding of our growing liability threat. Where is that piece?
Shame on you. You are part of the problem and are doing this community a huge disservice.
GX is right. We have to save the service metrics regarding miles and miles and miles of unpaved or badly paved roads. There are ampel indications that the union thug public school teadchers would rather receive a fare salery then fix a pot hole in front of my house. What gives? I can tell you what gives. Obama the Salama wants to replace normel boloney sausage with mid-east backed tubes of Salami. And then what? The long and short of it is that we need someone in office who will outsource all our porky jobs to China so that we can become more like China. Thank you GX for you’re irrudition. Whether you use the name Arnold or Kathleen or Stacey, your contributions all always appreciated.
“Steve,” nice attempt to tie teachers to spending on roads–two different government entities of course. Yes, you love hyperbole–and now there’s the additional illiterate component–so much easier than actually making a point.
Stacey, you misunderstand me. Of COURSE they are seperate entitties. But with less taxpayer money going toward incompitant teachers who hide behind union corruption and unspecificallized language the more money is leftover for filling potholes. You use you’re metric. I use mine. Were all of the same side of the boat!
You are so uneducable, Steve. I have no reason to post under more than one name. You? And I wouldn’t be on whatever boat you are sailing.
We have a extrordinary line of thought developing here with the potential to reach millions of readers. But then, a lass, unfortunetely, Kathleen/Stacey has to bring things down by name calling. Correction: We are all ON the same side of the boat. Those who refuse? They make me want to puke.
“We are all ON the same side of the boat.” Taking on water? I can see why you’d have an upset stomach. Please, do continue reaching out to the minions . . . millions.
In other words, the only reason a certain person responded here was because they thought I was writing under a different name. They actually have no interest in expressing their own thoughts and opinions on the subject beyond how best they can milk the topic to harass other posters. Cyberstalking is creepy.
Sock-puppetry and 24/7 monitoring of a small-town newspaper’s online forum is even more creepy.
Yeah, its all about you Stacey. Every body in the hole world is only thinking about you.
Only you, fake-Steve. That’s why you addressed a whole post to me on this thread BEFORE I posted. You guys really must have missed me! Awe…