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# Evelyn Jerome: Santa Monica's $9 million budget deficit demands tough choices
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/012103-story-20030121/
- Published: 2003-01-21T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T23:04:02.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless

*By Evelyn Jerome*

I recently took a crash course on our city’s budget. I figured if I’m going to throw stones at the City Council during the budget process, I should know a little about it.

After studying two several-inch thick notebooks of budget gobbledygook, I have some thoughts for the folks making the cutting and spending decisions.

We start with a budget of almost $400 million, and the budget wizards foresee a deficit of $9 million this year. Unlike the feds, we can’t run a deficit, so we have to cut expenses, raise revenues, or both.

The head budget guru, Mike Dennis, is a sharp guy. He’s given the City Council some ideas to ponder as they reconcile this $9 million deficit for the upcoming year. One-time cuts will not solve the looming problem, Dennis notes, so it’s belt-tightening time.

The City Council should view their decisions the way we run our households and businesses: What do we really need? Where can we sacrifice without it hurting too much? Who gets a raise and who does-n’t? The private sector faces these decisions every day.

Dennis offers revenue enhancement suggestions, cautioning that increasing parking meter rates, the hotel tax, and business license fees could affect our competitiveness as a tourist destination. I think his caution is well-placed.

The city could look at pet license fees for revenue enhancement. Santa Monica charges $12 for neutered dogs and $24 for unaltered dogs. Neighboring cities charge twice that — Los Angeles charges $100 to license an unaltered dog. Just a small, benign example.

Dennis’ common-sense cuts won’t reduce resident services.

Here are my suggestions. ■A hiring freeze (i.e. not filling vacant city positions) ■ A salary freeze for city employees (there was a one-year freeze during the recession of the early 1990s) ■ Halt construction projects, including library and park construction ■ Restructure the city’s benefit program We spend $22 million annually on “Community/Cultural Services,” with part of that serving 3,000 homeless people.

According to the 2002-2003 budget, only 10 percent were placed in permanent housing, and only 15 percent found employment. With tough decisions at hand, let’s get some bang for our social service bucks.

Let’s ask our residents to pitch in and help — why not ask senior citizens to volunteer in our libraries? Then we can take some senior program expenses and library assistant positions off the books.

Nothing should be “off the table” during this budget cycle. And by the way, how much did those shiny new bus benches cost? (Evelyn Jerome is a past president of the Los Angeles County Young Democrats, and a member of the New Democrat Network. To respond or to reach Jerome, )

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 21, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/012103.pdf?ref=smdp.com)