Skip to main content

West Sacramento News-Ledger

West Sacramento Makes Mid-Year Budget Adjustments

Aug 05, 2024 09:13AM ● By Mitch Barber

WEST SACRAMENTO, CA (MPG) - West Sacramento city officials talked numbers at the last regularly-scheduled council meeting.

On July 17, Finance Director Roberta Raper gave City Council mid-year adjustments to the 2024-25 mid-term budget, which runs from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025. 

Raper said the presentation was a “higher level overview to provide context for the public” for the budget adopted two fiscal years at a time.

“Because we adopt the budget over a year in advance, we prefer to perform an abbreviated process in the intervening year to review revenue projections and revisit our cost and expenditure assumptions and propose mid-term adjustments to update the budget for changes in the environment,” Raper said. 

Since the last adoption, labor negotiations, memoranda of understanding and benefit summaries for all labor groups have added $4.9 million to the General Fund budget, according to Raper.

“And $7.1 million overall,” she added.

Mid-year budget adjustments for the fiscal year 2023-24, adopted in January, have ongoing annual impacts of $371,000 to the General Fund and $9.2 million to all funds, according to Raper, detailing budget requests by category, including development, park projects, transportation, utility projects, and municipal facilities.

Raper started with $100,000 for the Grand Gateway Master Plan development, adding Park projects totaling more than $1.2 million for a backstop replacement and playfield conversion at Alyce Norman Park.

The bike, pedestrian and trail project requests total $2.797 million and include the Clarksburg Branch Line Extension, Sycamore Trail Phase 3 and Park Boulevard bike lane and crosswalk restriping.

Municipal facility improvements. totaling more than $3.9 million, include several fire station facility improvements, a new HVAC system for the Community Center, a public safety technology master plan and updates to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) transition plan.

After going through other notable improvements, Raper said the difference between the adopted expenditure budget for 2024-25 to that of the proposed expenditure budget is $27.7 million.

Of the $27.7 million increased proposal, $5.6 million comes from new grant funding for Capital Improvement Projects.

Mayor Martha Guererro said funding sources are difficult to track, which is why a budget book is key.  Raper confirmed a digital budget book is being processed and should be available in a couple of months.

According to the mayor, the book is essential for transparency, allowing the public to see fund totals. 

“It’s to hold us accountable for where we are spending the money,” Guerrero said, adding that “there are some long-term budget gaps. But we don’t have a budget deficit today, thankfully.”

“I did see that some of the budget packages were rejected and these are things that hopefully if they are necessary, we can get funded,” Guerrero said.

Raper said she will return for a second reading and adoption on Aug. 7, when she will give a budget brief, which is a one-page summary “on where the money comes and where the money goes.”