A 2020-2021 Walnut Creek budget of about $79 million, down almost $12 million from last year and more than $12 million less than what was originally anticipated for this coming year, was approved late Tuesday night by the Walnut Creek City Council.
The newly adopted budget includes cutting 19.25 full-time-equivalent job positions, mostly from the city’s arts and recreation programs.
These cuts, along with furloughs and pay concessions by top city executives, are expected to save the city $3.7 million. Additionally, further furloughs and/or other money-saving concessions with employee bargaining groups are ongoing; the final total of job cuts and hours reductions should be known this fall.
The various cuts were made in response to a projected $12.1 million general fund budget deficit for 2020-21. Walnut Creek’s budget situation, like that in virtually every California city, has been turned upside down by the loss of sales tax revenue and transient occupancy taxes from hotel and motel stays resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting shelter-in-place orders that have kept people mostly at home and out of businesses.
Walnut Creek has lost significant revenue related to the cancellation of the arts and recreation classes and programming, including events at the Lesher Center of the Arts — all direct consequences of the pandemic.
All five council members rued the fact people will lose their jobs, and Councilwoman Cindy Silva acknowledged that the loss of so many arts and recreation positions adds more sting.
Arts and recreation, she said, “is a centerpiece of what we do in Walnut Creek — it differentiates us.”
When Silva asked City Manager Dan Buckshi whether any of those jobs could be salvaged, Buckshi said that, especially given that the Lesher Center remains closed, the revenue needed to support those jobs isn’t there.
Also taking a major hit — about $913,000 — in the 2020-2021 budget is the city’s Police Department. Nevertheless, many of the public comments to the council Tuesday night implored further cuts, “defunding” the police and spending that money for other services.
The newly approved budget includes new funding for various police training, including anti-bias training.
Council members also said Walnut Creek police officials have been working to better respond to mental health-related calls. Police Chief Tom Chaplin said the department is now studying the kinds of calls that might be
better served by a “non-police response” from mental health experts, homeless outreach workers or others with specialized training.
Police are also working to set up meetings with Contra Costa County officials about prospects for a team of officers trained for responses to situations beyond those to which they typically respond.
The approved budget also calls for cutting support to various community groups by 14 percent — about $79,000 — for 2020-21. Several notable entities, including the Lindsay Wildlife Experience, the Gardens at
Heather Farm, the Walnut Creek Historical Society and the annual Walnut Festival, get direct and/or in-kind city support.
Also affected by these specific cuts will be school crisis counselors, school crossing guards, the city’s Concert Band, plus park concerts, school concerts and Community Service Grants.
And all without depletion of the City’s Emergency Fund. You know – in case there’s an emergency or something.
news flash
the council still gets theirs though
fully funded and full benefits
Council salaries are mice nuts compared to the enormous salaries of the lifers in the arts departments.
No one from the Lesher was cut back in 2010 when the new library debacle put the city in the red.
I read the Lesher will be closed until January 2021.
Is the Glenhaven home for visiting actors up for sale yet?
Let me guess , the mayor is a democrat . I find it hard to believe that WC residents agree with defunding the police. I call BS . They are trying to save their own back sides from being attacked. What a bunch of wusses . Can’t anyone in government grow a set and stand up for what is right instead of cowing down to marxist / anarchist groups! And notice they didnt reduce any of their pay or benefits !
And legal gun sales have gone wild. People who don’t even like guns are buying them realizing that soon they will have to be their own first responder.
With violence moving to the suberbs, catch and release, No-bail, and emptying prisons, can you blame them?
Further, if a person with mental problems accosts you in your home, they plan to send in a guidance counselor to reason with them?
Anyone who cares about real safety for their loved ones needs to show it at the ballot box, and sign the Newsom Recall. Refuse to be a victim.
So, this is concerning because these decision makers are either:
1) Evil
or
2) Stupid
1) Evil because they know they are cowards but don’t care about the safety of their own off-spring much less the citizens they represent.
or
2) Stupid because they don’t know they are cowards and putting the safety of their own off-spring in jeopardy.
Bad idea to cut $$ from PD
You mean its a bad idea to make a bloated department have to tighten their purse strings a little bit? I think its a solid idea.
I liked Walnut Creek better when it was 80% Republican. It was always an upscale desirable City. But now that things have shifted to where the Democrats are fully in control I don’t expect a lot anymore. A lot of Berkeley and Oakland wackos have moved to Walnut Creek in the last 10 years. They came to bring with them the crazy liberalism which they love, but they moved out of the places that came sewers because of that same Liberalness. Leave it to them and I’ll soon have Walnut Creek being a dirty unsafe City.
Ah yes, the Liberal locusts devastate the countryside and then move on to their next fertile target, until everything resembles Detroit, Baltimore, San Poopcisco, Oakland, Seattle, and so on…
Yeah, the whole concept of moving somewhere because it has more desirable characteristics, but then wanting it to be like the place you left that wasn’t as desirable, is baffling to me.
Is anyone else out there scared to put a Trump 2020 sign in their front yard?
You’re just inviting vandalism. Lefties are violent & insane.
With all those wackos on the Left who see it and do damage to your property and you become a target of the INSANE sheep. but if you pull guard duty on it and smack em upside da head when they try something it might be satisfying.
Saw the couple from Martinez tonight were on Tucker Carlson. they were spot on. good for them ! everybody should start standing up like that. good interview.
Thank you to them !
Heads up taxpayers of Walnut Creek.
The director for the ARTS costs us close to $300,000 per year!!!
Look at the current salaries.
Departments heads at USC don’t make that much.
Who at the city approves these enormous salaries?
Just means I’ll have to start making Citizens Arrests. Let one young man go last week….caught him doing a petty theft.
108RS
The budgets cuts were because of the economic downturn as a result of the pandemic. Every city has had to make economic sacrifices. The decision wasn’t about “leftists”, or “appeasing” protestors. This has nothing to do with “Trump signs” on your yard.
The police budget for Walnut Creek went from $27.6 million to $26.7 million. That is a reduction of only 4%. Concord reduced police spending by 8%, in comparison. These cuts always are preceded by negotiations with police union representatives. No officer was fired, and nobody on the police department had their shift hours reduced. If you read the documentation from the city budget packet, they made cuts that would effect the department the least. Other departments took greater reductions than the police.
Promoting arts is something gov’t should not be in the business of doing…the private sector should. Supply/demand would determine the level of funding needed for arts and recreation.
Agreed. Private funds.
Unfortunately, community theatre has cost Walnut Creek more than just taxpayer dollars.
But it’s a family affair. So it’s all good.
Defund the police while crime is on the rise. No wonder guns and ammo sales are higher than they’ve ever been. Too bad California makes it so hard for us to get what is our constitutional right to own