On Tuesday night, leaders of a Tri-Valley city will tackle similar budget issues as Oakland and San Francisco.
Pleasanton is seeing rising costs and insufficient revenue to keep pace. In November, a proposal for a half-cent sales tax to help close the budget gap was rejected by 54 percent of the vote.
At Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, newly elected council members will take the first steps toward addressing what could be a deficit of more than $100 million over the next eight years.
“Have you been there before,” Wendi Shulte asks two women as they walk into her store.
She and her husband have been small business owners in Pleasanton for almost a decade.
“We chose this area because it was one of the safer areas to run a small business,” Schulte said.
They own Good Common Sense Naturals – an all-organic skin care and bath store. They make all their products in-house in a space at the back of the store called The Kitchen.
“The biggest issue in any business is always safety. Safety for my employees and safety for my customers,” she said.
That’s why Schulte and others in the city were concerned when they heard about some of the city government’s proposed cuts. The suggestions include more than $1 million in cuts to the police department, including eliminating school staff and the K9 program, as well as closing one of the city’s fire stations.
“I think our community was pretty clear that public safety was one of their top priorities,” said newly elected Pleasanton Mayor Jack Balch.
He said public safety cuts should be a last resort, but Pleasanton’s budget problems are no different than many other cities. Across the Bay Area, most of the money from a city’s general fund goes to public safety, so it’s difficult to balance a budget without cutting back on those services.
“I think our community, based on the election, has elected leaders to do the hard work of deciding whether other things can happen first,” Balch said.
He also acknowledged that the city is dealing with an aging infrastructure that costs more to maintain, while at the same time the cost of goods and labor has increased significantly while revenues have remained relatively flat. Most of the city’s money for the general fund comes from property tax revenue.
Balch hopes the new Costco in Pleasanton will add sales tax revenue to make up for declining sales at Stoneridge Mall, where many of the big stores like Nordstrom have already closed.
For Shulte, she hopes the city looks at the budget like a business owner tightens the belt before critical services are cut.
“That they have dug themselves very deeply into this and that there is no other choice, but that there is no other choice if we sacrifice our safety,” she asked.
The city council will decide during its meeting Tuesday evening whether to form a budget committee to gather input on how and where cuts should be made. No action will be taken to cut the budget until the middle of next year.
