District 3 Councilmember Toni Atkins and City Manager Lamont Ewell outlined the upcoming 2006 fiscal year budget at a budget forum on April 14 held at the Alice Birney Elementary School Auditorium in University Heights.

Ewell, who will submit his budget recommendations to the City Council and Mayor Dick Murphy on May 2, asked for community input in order to determine what the priorities are in District 3.

Atkins stressed that communication with her constituents should remain open concerning any issues that affect the city and her district, especially public safety, community revitalization and infrastructure. She said that there is a lot that needs to be done in concern to maintenance issues that have been pushed aside due to lack of resources in the city and District 3.

“We are an older urban community and we have decades of deferred maintenance and catch-up to do; so it will still hopefully be done when I am gone in a couple of years from now. Eight years is hardly enough time to really catch up on decades of deferred maintenance that we have had to deal with in our older urban communities,” Atkins said.

Atkins went on to mention the serious financial problems the city of San Diego has faced with regard to the pension-fund crisis, state-level budget cuts and budget shortfalls on a federal level that have a direct impact on San Diego.

Ewell reviewed the expenditures for the 2005 fiscal year. Of the total $2.48 billion, $817 million, or 32.9 percent, was put into the general fund, which encompasses eight different areas including public safety, park and recreation and neighborhood services.

About half way through the fiscal year the city discovered they would have a budget shortfall of about $26 million.

“When we did our projections this year, as we tracked month by month on how we are doing. Sometime in early December we started realizing we were going to be short of revenue by about $26 million; and that’s a lot of money, yes, but that’s 3 percent of the total budget,” Ewell explained.

The $26 million shortfall resulted from underfunding the police department $9 million and fire departments $2 million. Other areas that went over budget: the City Attorney’s Office at $700,000; a $6.5 million unexpected payment for retiree healthcare costs; an unexpected roof repair to the Aerospace Museum totaling $1.3 million; and $7.2 million for the public-liability fund, which pays for attorney and accounting fees related to the investigation of City Council.

Ewell said in terms of surplus revenue, the city projected $16 million above what they had expected, so that left the overall budget shortfall at around $10 million.

“Again, that’s a little over 1 percent of the general budget. We were pretty happy we had a variance of about 1 percent, which is pretty good when you look at it in broader terms,” he said.

In order to make up for the budget shortfall, Ewell said some vacancies will not be filled and other departments are being closely monitored to save costs. He is confident the city will end the fiscal year within budget.

“We look at areas where we won’t negatively impact the public. We try to save those things and leave them open,” Ewell said.

He estimates San Diego’s net-revenue growth in 2006 to be $20-25 million. Expenditures are expected at $70-75 million.

Ewell stressed how important it is to hear from the community what their concerns are regarding how the city is going to move into the 2006 fiscal year with a balanced budget.

“We’ve been working on that over the last several weeks. We’ve got some work yet to do. We’re close to closing this budget.”

One of the priorities for the budget concerns unfunded needs, which account for $531.6 million, excluding public safety. Ewell said revenues can be produced to help fund these needs, but many depend on policy changes and increases in fees and taxes.

Concerns over the lack of available parking in the Hillcrest business district were brought up, and Atkins said a parking structure in Hillcrest would be necessary alleviate the problem.

“We wouldn’t have such a parking problem in Hillcrest if we had the ability to build a parking structure like we’re doing in North Park,” she said. “Years ago that would have been great. Now we’re playing catch-up, and with all these development pressures in Uptown we’re still having a problem.”

Representatives from various arts and cultural programs in San Diego attended the meeting and voiced their concern over recommended cuts to arts and cultural funding, which have been cut each year for the past three years. Atkins was unaware there was a recommendation in place to decrease funding for those programs.

“That concerns me a great deal,” she said. “I understand your point because you don’t want to let the kids go; because you don’t want to see them not be exposed to arts and culture and music at that age; because it does a world of good.”