Signs of San Diego Budget Mismanagement Grow as Audits Find Millions in Uncollected Fees

AENN

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Evan Symon

Budgetary problems in the city of San Diego have been seemingly endless since last year. In November, San Diego City Schools announced a $176 million deficit. In February, the city itself was $258 million in the red. Last month, it grew even worse when it was recalculated to show that they were over $300 million in debt for the upcoming fiscal year. And that’s not even getting into La Jolla currently making a bid to become their own city and taking away a significant amount of tax revenue if they do.

Mayor Todd Gloria and other city officials have scrambled to do anything to fix the problem. They managed to save $13 million by consolidating office space. The next budget, due in a few months, is expected to have a lot of cuts to make up for it, including to police, homeless services, libraries, and other essential services. City lawmakers and employees, however, aren’t getting pay cuts. While other big cities, like Los Angeles and San Francisco, have a lot of sacrifices to cut back on their budgets, including SF Mayor Daniel Lurie not taking a salary and LA Mayor Karen Bass agreeing to a reduced salary, San Diego isn’t taking those needed drastic steps. And Councilmembers are getting anxious.

“I’m concerned the that revenue projections in the mayor’s proposed budget may be fairly rosy” and that a big change between April and May throws the entire process out of whack,” said Councilman Kent Lee. “Council needs to understand what the next potential layers of impact you are anticipating are, because those are going to be part of the discussion that we have to have. I think if we just spent our time discussing what’s in this proposal, we’re likely going to miss a chunk of things that you’ll bring forward in May.”

Problem’s in America’s Finest City

Others have vowed to fight tooth and nail against some cuts.

“It’s unacceptable to me that libraries and rec centers in communities that have been underinvested in for decades are getting the same cuts as in some of our most affluent communities in the city,” added Councilman Sean Elo-Rivera. “The across-the-board cuts are simply not something that I will be able to accept, and that’s going to be a hard line for me.”

The big problem has been that, with all the talks of budget cuts, San Diego really didn’t check the books as hard as they thought. One audit this week found that the city was not collecting millions each year in trash fees from private haulers. In the past fiscal year, San Diego lost out on $4 million, and since 2010, about $25 million in total. Compared to a $300 million deficit, it’s not all that big, but it would still nonetheless make a dent and perhaps save some needed police jobs or help keep some more homeless services up and running. And the trash audit is particularly startling considering that residents are seeing trash collection fees skyrocket to help the system keep going.

And that was just one audit of one department.

Like many cities in California, San Diego is in a budget crunch that needs to be solved pretty quickly. And unlike neighboring L.A., which can at least partially blame their high deficit on the January wildfires, San Diego has no real outside blame. This is all on them. And so far, they are not going the distance other Californian cities are going with leaders taking pay cuts to help reduce salary overhead or, say, making sure that all uncollected fees are being paid.

America’s Finest City has a long road ahead if they truly want to live up to their city nickname.