This is budget season, and the Sonoma City Council is knee-deep in workshops, discussions and presentations as it considers a $29.6 million budget for fiscal year 2014-15 that is set to be approved this Monday night.
Until then, the discussions continue, including a several-hour study session last Monday afternoon – during which the city’s department heads gave presentations to council members on the budgets they manage – and shifting to a presentation from the city’s four “tier 1 nonprofits” at that evening’s regular meeting.
As City Manager Carol Giovanatto and Mayor Tom Rouse explained at the start of the regular meeting, the four nonprofits before them – Boys & Girls Clubs of Sonoma Valley, Sonoma Community Center, Sonoma Ecology Center and Vintage House Senior Center – essentially take the place of a parks and recreation department for the city. As nonprofits, they take their funding from several sources, including grants from the city.
This year, the nonprofits were asking the council for an approximately 20 percent increase in that funding, which they said would make up for lost revenue due to recession-related cuts made since 2008. If the council members decided to approve the funding – which they eventually did – the total amount of grant allocations would come to about $168,000 altogether.
Dave Pier of the Boys & Girls Clubs said his organization runs a variety of programs for the Valley’s youth, including athletics, camps, academic support and other resources.
“In the summertime, which just got underway at the club, we are full steam ahead with about 300 (kids served) a day,” Pier said. Several hundred are served throughout the year in various capacities.
Councilmember Laurie Gallian asked Pier a question she would ask each of the nonprofit leaders in turn: What services would you have to cut if the 20 percent increase wasn’t approved?
Pier said he couldn’t say exactly – but noted that four-fifths of the group’s budget goes to personnel, so that would mostly likely be the first thing to suffer.
“We’re in the people business, it’s all about relationships,” he said, adding, “It all comes down to staff and staffing issues.”
Toni Castrone executive director of the Sonoma Community Center was next, telling the council that her group’s programs “truly reflect that intangible small-town feeling that makes Sonoma so great.” One example, she said, is the city’s Fourth of July celebration, which the community center organizes and which recently won national recognition from a travel magazine.
But the group offers much more than that, she said, listing diverse offerings – from sustainability programs to disaster readiness – and explaining that, “The beneficiaries of this partnership are going to be the people who live in this community.”
“Our goal is pretty simple. We want to provide the best programming possible given our limited budget,” she said.
As for the requested grant increase, “The cost to simply exist has risen steadily” since the last modest increase three years ago, she said. “As a result we have to spend a lot more time fundraising to close this gap.”
These presentations were followed by others from Richard Dale of the Sonoma Ecology Center – who touted the group’s Sonoma Garden Park as a key part of the region’s science education – and by Vintage House’s Cindy Scarborough.
“One in three residents in the city of Sonoma is 60 or above,” Scarborough noted.
“We took a cut when the economy went down,” she went on. The requested grant increase before the council “keeps us moving forward, compensating for the cuts we have experienced.”
Council members agreed, although not without some words of warning on fiscal responsibility.
“You guys do a lot for the community. And I understand that,” said Councilmember David Cook. But he added, “Please don’t base your budgets on this money. ... We’re not really in that good of shape.”
All agreed in the value of the city’s tier 1 nonprofit system, however. “This whole tier 1 thing has come into being since I’ve been sitting up here,” said Councilmember Steve Barbose. “And I think it is a really good thing that our community came together and recognized these four nonprofits. ... I am so proud of this community and these organizations, and the fact that our city has a history of supporting them.”
“I came to this position through working for the community center and local nonprofits,” said Councilmember Ken Brown. “I understand everything you’re going through.”
Following a motion from Barbose to grant the nonprofits funding at about 20 percent over last year’s level – with the added funding to come from “undesignated special projects” – the council passed the motion on a 5-0 vote. The vote upped the total grant amount by about $31,000, with nearly all of it coming from general fund reserves.
That expense was rolled into the final operating and capital budget for the coming fiscal year, which is now before the council and set to be voted on at a special meeting called for this Monday, June 30. The meeting starts at 6 p.m. in the Community Meeting Room.
A staff report breaks the budget into its component parts, with the largest allocations going to police ($4.4 million), fire and emergency services ($5 million), streets and capital projects ($2.2 million), water ($6.7 million) and the “recognized obligation schedule” for the city’s former Community Development Agency ($4.3 million).
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: