Manteca’s general fund is scoring much needed help in the next fiscal year from the Big League Dreams sports complex.

Now that the park fee account has been repaid the money used to upgrade infields and build the indoor soccer arena, the annual lease receipts averaging $400,000 will now go to the city’s stressed general fund starting July 1.

It will help reduce the upcoming fiscal year’s projected structural deficit - the gap between what the city needs to spend to provide basic day-to-day services such as police and fire and the amount of revenue they receive during the year - to $1.43 million.

It is part of the proposed 2012-13 fiscal year budget City Manager Karen McLaughlin is presenting to the City Council on Thursday, June 28, at a 2 p.m. workshop at the Civic Center, 1001 W. Center St.

Overall revenues are expected to drop $230,760 from this year - the smallest retreat in five years - to $26,372,560. General fund revenue was at a historic high of $32,270,080 in the 2007-08 fiscal year. The proposed budget reflects a $5.9 million decline or a 22.4 percent reduction in annual revenue from the peak fiscal year.

Sales tax - which is now the biggest source of general fund revenue at 33 percent - is expected to increase 4 percent. Property tax receipts are expected to decline 4 percent. It will make property tax the second largest source of general fund income. That is the first time ever that sales tax has displaced property tax as the city’s top source of revenue.

The proposed general fund spending plan calls for expenditures of $27,137,075 or a one percent jump over the last year. It is the first time general fund spending has increased in five years.

The overall city budget including all restricted accounts is $95.7 million including $13.6 million worth of capital improvement projects. None of the restricted funds can be used for day-to-day services such as police and fire or parks.



Budget uses growth fees to avoid layoffs in Development Services

Part of the $1.4 million structured deficit is being covered with $440,685 in development agreement fees that are being used to keep all Development Services positions in place for one year.

McLaughlin said the city did not think it would be wise to cut development staff just as CenterPoint and Austin Road Business Park - two major private sector job generating proposals - are preparing to move forward.

The staff won’t simply be sitting around waiting for work. Instead, the city is one of the few able to take advantage of the Smart Growth imitative that allows cities to essentially do one overall environmental study of various growth concerns such as air quality. That means once the city drafts and adopts Smart Growth policies with impact data and how to mitigate problems they can be used as a boilerplate of sorts.

That would mean the approval process for developments would be reduced plus redundant environmental work would be eliminated.

The goal is to speed up the approval process without comprising environmental issues to make Manteca more attractive to private sector concerns that want to build employment centers.

McLaughlin said the one-time use of the fees for that purpose makes sense since they are largely discretionary growth fees paid by developers. Of that, $90,000 is mitigation development fees that are no longer collected. Those funds would specifically pay for city staff that is devising the Smart Growth document.



One-time sources may help hire more cops

By next Thursday’s workshop, McLaughlin said staff hopes to identify funds that could be tapped on a one-time basis to possibly add additional police officers.

The city manager said that the staff does not want to advance any proposal if they can’t make sure the positions can continue to be funded as it would make no sense to train an office then release then within a year.

All council members have made it clear funding a way to strength police resources is a top priority providing the city can find the money to do so and sustain the effort.



Eliminating structured general fund budget deficit

The proposed budget marks the closest the city has come to bridging the structured deficit in at least a decade. In the past, the city simply tapped into reserves and unrestricted funds such as bonus bucks (the sewer allocation certainty fees) to cover the gap between revenue and expenditures.

The $1.4 million structured deficit is $4 million less than what it was projected at back in January 2011 as part of a five-year conservative scenario presented to the council.

The structured deficit for the most part is being whittled away with significant employee concessions in salaries and benefits plus municipal workers making large contributions to their retirement funds while the city cuts its portion.

Unless the economy goes into a double dip recession or the state finds a way to take more money from local jurisdictions, the structured deficit is on target to be eliminated by 2015 if not sooner.