Sounding Off:

That noise you hear in the background is the clock ticking on our budget process. City Manager Allan Roeder recently promised, in no uncertain terms, that the city will have a balanced budget by the July 1 deadline. Tick-tock, tick-tock...

At its meetings, the Costa Mesa City Council has met in closed session to discuss negotiations with the employee unions. In this week’s meeting, the staff will present to the council their proposed budget for fiscal year 2009-10.

On Tuesday, the council will hold a study session to review the budget and, if history holds true, there will be a public workshop on the budget, probably on June 11. Final approval of the budget will likely occur at the June 16 meeting.

In recent years attendance at that workshop has been sparse, to say the least. By that I mean there have been three of us there for the entire program, with a couple of people wandering through from time to time. It always amazes me how little public interest there has been when it comes to the budget even though every element of our municipal government depends on how those numbers are crunched.

The finance staff has won awards year after year for the past decade for their budget presentation. Typically, it provides information for every level of interest, beginning with a Budget-at-a-Glance booklet and progressing through a couple of documents that provide greater detail and on to the actual budget itself for those nitpickers among us who actually try to devour the information line item by line item.

Our city, and every other in this state, is in big trouble budget-wise this year. We’ve managed to get by for the past few years by the creative use of what is known as the “fund balance” — applying leftover dollars to the next budget. That pool of money is just about tapped out because it has been used to balance the current budget, so it’s very likely that, for our leaders to balance the new budget there will be very wide and deep personnel cuts — that’s where the money is, after all. Almost 75% of our municipal expenditures are for wages and benefits.

I encourage anyone who is interested in the fiscal well-being of our city, and the budget process in particular, to attend the council study session or, even better, the public workshop. My personal experience at those workshops over the past few years has been totally positive — no question went unanswered. It’s the time to get the real scoop on the budget and help dispel any myths you might have about where the money comes from and where it goes, and why.

I’ll see you at the workshop June 11, Conference Room 1A at City Hall. Bring your questions.

GEOFF WEST is a Costa Mesa resident