Using a balanced approach to supporting municipal services
Jan 14, 2010

By Richard Earnest
Mayor, Del Mar

The City of Del Mar, along with municipalities all over the country, is feeling the painful financial squeeze of the recession.

The current two-year budget, adopted in June of this year, manages to maintain city services by cutting vacant positions, freezing salaries, and limiting maintenance and capital programs to core essential services and to those programs that have other funding sources, such as Streetscape, the North Torrey Pines Bridge and the 21st Street Pump Station.

The other part of the solution is to implement new revenue sources. The city has increased its transient occupancy tax from 10.5 percent to 11.5 percent, has updated its cost allocation plan to better recover its indirect costs in rates and charges, and will shortly increase its planning and development fees for the first time since 2004. Despite these efforts to cut expenditures and increase revenues, city reserves continue to bump along at just above its 10 percent minimum reserve level.

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