San Bernadino city is heading to the point of crisis and that is why the Council meeting was crucial to organize. To address budget shortfalls in thirteen of the past sixteen years, the City has already cut staffing levels, added new revenue sources, expended reserves, and is now faced with eliminating services and programs (Miller & Simpson, 2012). Therefore, there were a lot of undesirable closures and savings, which were conducted by the City’s council in order to save the budget. That is why the meeting was mainly focused on the revision of the new budget proposal, which supports a large majority of municipal services.
In fact, as of June 30, 2011 the City’s fund balance has alredy declined to a negative $1.2 million (Miller & Simpson, 2012). That is why the meeting covered some important situations, which contributed to this problem. It is crucial to pay attention to the recent world economic crisis. In fact, property taxes continue to be impacted by significant drop in housing prices in 2008 and on-going foreclosures throughout the City and that is why the San Bernadino may have reached the bottom of the decline in housing values (Miller & Simpson, 2012). It is a serious problem and there is no specific period when the prices are expected to be icreased.
Nevertheless, some advantages of the city, which can contribute to resolution of current problems, were also highlited during the Council Meeting. For instance, the City’s population, size, and opportunities for economic development of former EDA properties provide for an optimistic outlook (Miller & Simpson, 2012). Nevertheless, in order to enjoy these advantages the city has to implement some programs and increase the amount of voters’ support and approval of its policies. In addition, over the past ten years, the City’s population has grown by roughly 13% resulting in increasing demands for services to the community (Miller & Simpson, 2012). That is why it is crucial to sensibly manage this large workforce.
The City is a service organization with approximately two-thirds of the City’s General Fund budget attributable to personnel costs (Miller & Simpson, 2012). Nowadays, the Administration believes that the next round of workforce cut is able to balance the budget, because it can also cut off expenses on retirement. Nevertheless, it is important to carefully approach this strategy and analyze its impact on community as well as essential public organizations. One of the reasons is that there are some public organizations, which cannot be put out of business, because they will stop providing vital services to the citizens. Therefore, the main goal of the new plan would be to sustain the amount of services necessary for the growing population of San Bernadino and reduce expenses on workforce.
Unfortunately, nowadays the city is in the state of fiscal emergency. The rise in salary and retirement costs combined with decreased revenues have staggering implications on San Bernardino’s ability to provide essential services (Miller & Simpson, 2012). Nevertheless, in order to find …