Sounding Off:

The Costa Mesa City Council at a Study Session today will discuss the city’s budget woes. This issue has fallen through the cracks in recent months due to the fractious publicity swirling around the proposed purchase of the Orange County Fair & Events Center. The budget, however, has been the elephant in the room all along and, as the council members and residents will discover today, that elephant has pushed the door open so we all can see what’s going on.

City Manager Allan Roeder and Budget and Research Officer Bobby Young will present to the council preliminary budget numbers that make last year’s travails pale by comparison.

Due to continuing drops in all revenue sources the city will, once again, be forced to practically drain the Fund Balance account to come up with a balanced budget proposal by July 1, and then only after draconian measures are imposed.

After all the creative maneuvering last year to balance the current budget, the city has finally run out of flesh to carve off our municipal carcass. We are down to the skeleton and will begin chopping off extremities, all while hoping we will remain ambulatory enough to still get the job done.

For example, the city has been operating with 71 positions vacant for months. Those will not be included in the 2010/11 budget. Additionally — and this is the tragic part — plans are being made to reduce 47 full-time and 26 part-time positions, with another four full-time slots being converted to part-time jobs. These are not just empty slots — they are occupied positions with faces, including some of your friends and neighbors. The Police and Fire departments are among those losing the greatest number of staffers.

The staff has prepared a prioritization plan to assist the council in establishing just which programs and services they feel should receive preferred treatment when the budget is being discussed.

They will also ask residents to participate in this exercise, to provide a clear indication of how the community feels about which programs and services should be saved, and in which order. Completed forms, to be made available on the city website, must be returned to the City by May 25 to be included in the compilation. Roeder and his senior staff have been cautioning the council and residents for the past couple years that, unless something completely unexpected and near-miraculous happened to improve our revenue position, cuts in programs and services (that means people) would necessarily have to be imposed.

We are at that point and it’s going to be painful. Some of our elected leaders have a knee-jerk reaction to avoid any kind of tax increase, period. However, the city has the lowest Transient Occupancy Tax in the county. A two-point bump in that tax could mean saving several public safety jobs. We also have the lowest Business License Fees in the county.

Changing that fee structure to a more appropriate assessment level could also save jobs.

Our leaders should place both these issues on the November ballot and give the voters a chance to be heard on them.

The next opportunity for either or both of these items to be placed before the people would be in 2012.

This is where we find out just what kind of wisdom and character our elected leaders possess. We’ll find out if they will let partisan political ideology cloud their decisions.

We will find out if they will do what is best for our community or what is best for their political careers. I hope you all will let the council know how you feel about these budget cuts and potential increased revenue sources, and do it soon.

GEOFF WEST lives in Costa Mesa.