Yuba City council makes budget cuts as city faces $5.5M shortfall. What will be affected?

Overgrown grass and shortened hours at City Hall are among the early signs of budget cuts expected to appear throughout Yuba City as local officials make stop-gap fixes to the city’s looming shortfall.

Yuba City council members on Tuesday approved a series of budget cuts that have been in the works since November, when voters rejected an added 1% sales tax the city pitched to straighten out its finances and add services, including road maintenance and public safety jobs.

Future cuts may prove more extreme, city officials have said, with closure of a fire station among other services up for consideration in the coming months.

“I think considering the forecast of these next couple of years, let’s hope the valley is temporary, but we all know that there are going to be more cuts that have to be made,” said Toni Cole, city council member.

Facing a $5.5 million shortfall and without the promise of a new sales tax that could have brought in more than $17 million a year, the city was poised to run through the roughly $4.2 million left in its budget safety net by the end of this fiscal year, leaving nearly $1.3 million to cover.

The approved cuts are estimated to account for that total, safeguarding deeper city reserves and portending more belt tightening to come.

“To the residents, be patient. This hopefully will be short-lived but we will see changes to level of services,” said Mayor Dave Shaw. “We know that. And to the council, I would say remain resolute, because we know we’re going to get those phone calls.”

The failed penny tax, called measure D, proposed by the city with some of its proceeds going to Sutter County, failed by a larger margin than a similar county-led effort in 2022. Yuba City’s sales tax, at 7.25%, remains among the lowest in the state. Voters in neighboring Marysville handily approved a renewal of a similar 1% sales tax increase in the recent election.

“We know we’re going to get people complaining about this and that,” Shaw continued. “But we heard the voters loud and clear when we had the mechanism to fix all this, and fix the rising inflationary cost, and we missed it by about 1,800 votes. So this is where we’re at.”

What’s cut from the budget?

City officials have avoided direct layoffs or furloughs, but have effectively scaled back city payroll by attrition, putting clamps on many open jobs throughout the city.

Department heads, at the council’s direction, proposed changes and found savings in the current budget, which continues through June, while planning to further downsize the next budget that begins in July.

Some of the most forward-facing changes may show at city parks and facilities, including City Hall, which will now close to the public on Fridays.

Also visible to the public, the city is pulling funding from the city’s summer concert series and no longer sponsoring a booth at the Yuba-Sutter Fair, opting to distribute city materials through the police department’s booth.

Credit card processing fees previously absorbed by the city will now pass on to customers.

City officials hoped to avoid cutting from the police and fire departments, which each froze vacant jobs as part of the budget trim. That put emphasis on the city’s community services, which includes parks and recreation.

Landscaping and upkeep took a hit, scaling back mowing, the park reservation system and weekend trash collection. Switching some contracted landscape services to city workers comes at the cost of upping the workload on city workers. Workers will now mow less frequently and have less regular maintenance of Yuba City’s downtown district.

“That’s just honestly going to kill that staff because they take such pride in the facilities but that’s what’s going to be necessary,” said Diana Langley, city manager, about lowering expenses to within the council’s target.

Finding a new city manager

The budget decisions also come amid a leadership change as Langley is leaving the city next month for the same role at a smaller town in Colorado.

Council members are in the process of hiring an interim city manager before Langley, who said she’s moving to be closer to her daughter, leaves in late March. With an interim manager in place, searching for a permanent replacement may take about eight months, Shaw has said.

Langley has worked for the city for more than 25 years, serving as interim manager on occasion before spending the past several in the top role. The city has faced hard times before, such as the Great Recession and during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, each of which resulted in budget shortfalls and subsequent cuts.

The budget stabilization reserve, which officials expect may be completely depleted by the budget’s end in June, was built during the pandemic with American Rescue Plan Act funds.

Expenses and inflation have escalated since then while the city’s revenue has stalled in recent years. That has included lagging sales taxes, a major driver of the city’s income.