Sounding Off:

OK, the city of Costa Mesa now has a budget, but not without lots of heated discussion and unnecessary blood-letting at its meeting June 16.

The city staff, led by City Manager Allan Roeder, Finance Director Marc Puckett and Budget and Research Officer Bobby Young, have been working diligently for months toward presenting a balanced budget for the council’s consideration.

In April, Roeder and his staff presented the council with a 10-point plan — a road map to a balanced budget. That plan depended on many factors over which the city has no control. Still pending, but part of the plan, is the completion of negotiations with the four employee unions, which are being asked to take a 5% pay cut.

We still do not know how many, if any, employees will take advantage of the enhanced retirement plan that was part of Roeder’s overall scheme. We still don’t know the impact of the ongoing decline in sales tax revenue and the transient occupancy tax — both are down dramatically so far this calendar year.

During the council meeting, Councilman Gary Monahan forced an unnecessary and divisive exercise to, as he proclaimed, cut another $650,000 from the budget. He began his slash and burn approach to budgeting by recommending the cancellation of the Neighbors to Neighbors program, which is paid for by federal Community Development Block Grant funds and will not affect the budget one iota.

Monahan didn’t make his $650,000 because wiser heads prevailed.

When he suggested firing one animal control officer (much to the chagrin of Police Chief Chris Shawkey) and two code enforcement officers, Councilman Eric Bever joined Councilwomen Wendy Leece and Katrina Foley in rejecting those moves. That basically left the recreation programs in our city, which Monahan went after with a vengeance.

After the dust settled and the staff had a chance to tally up Monahan’s damage the next day, barely $100,000 was trimmed from the already-balanced budget and more than a third of that came from cuts from the City Council budget itself.

Monahan and Mayor Mansoor seemed not to care that they were cutting programs that form the fabric of our community.

In addition to many youth after-school and recreation programs, they tried to chop the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) funding. Fortunately, that also failed to pass.

When it was finally voted on, Bever, ironically, voted no and proclaimed that, because of so many variables at play, the city should bite the bullet and make large, across the board cuts (that’s layoffs, friends) to ensure that the budget is balanced. The remainder of the council supported the budget as amended.

The budget process continues, with employee union meetings and tallying up the bodies that will be lost in the recreation programs. Personally, having followed this process for several years, I have complete confidence that Roeder and his staff will keep our ship from going over the falls as we move forward. With Roeder at the helm we are in good shape — if we can keep the irresponsible and capricious members of the City Council from trying to grab the tiller, that is.

GEOFF WEST lives in Costa Mesa.