Council Approves 2011-12 Budget

The Beverly Hills City Council enacted on Tuesday a $418 million budget for fiscal year 2011-12.

Council members voted on three separate resolutions: the first established a budget limit, the next covered the city's operating budget and another was on the capital improvements program. The budget limit and operating budget passed unanimously, but the council split 3-2 on capital improvements.

"This was not an easy task since we began our budget process looking at a of about $4.5 million," said Scott Miller, the city's chief financial officer and administrative services director. "However, through a number of balancing mechanisms ... including one-time equipment replacement deferrals, a reduction in the general fund transfer to capital improvement projects, transferring funds from other reserves into the general fund and employee furloughs, we have achieved a balanced budget with a small end-year reserve of $235,000."

Miller also reported the following totals:

• General fund: $164.2 million
• Enterprise fund: $96.9 million
• Internal service fund: $92.4 million
• Capital improvement programs: $55.9 million
• Grants and special revenues: $8.6 million

Councilwoman Lili Bosse and Councilman John Mirisch objected to shifting a part-time, 35-hour a week Parks Department job to 40-hour, full-time status.

"[The Community Services Department sees] the additional time being an opportunity to do additional programming that also generates revenue as a part of that position," City Manager Jeff Kolin said. "That was part of the rationale for recommending approval to the city council."

Bosse's "only concern was it was just five hours a week and primarily most of the money was for benefits," she said. "Given that we are now aware of benefits and pensions and all of that, it was hard for me to justify for only five hours a week $40,000 of an ongoing commitment."

Mirisch agreed.

"For five hours to go to a situation where you have to provide full benefits at this stage doesn't make sense," he said.

Councilman Julian Gold, however, noted that those hours add up.

"That's 250 hours a year," he said. "It's not an insignificant amount of time."

Vice Mayor William Brien said that overall he thinks "it's a really good budget."

"I could go line by line through the budget and find things that I would rather reduce here or there and find areas where I don't think we went deep enough, and other areas where maybe we've gone too deep," Brien said. "It gets us through the next year in a good way, and I'll take the city manager's recommendation and support it as is."

The council singled out the Parks and Recreation item and voted 3-2 to keep it in this year's legislative package.

Bosse and Mirisch also voted against the budget resolution for capital improvement programs.

On Wednesday the councilwoman said she voted in the opposition "because of the magnitude of the . I think we need a scaled down version of what is proposed."

Bosse called for nixing an idea for a banquet hall and gymnasium and said "the Roxbury facility that is proposed is underparked."

Council members did unanimously approve a budget cap, which is a "formula-based limit approved by voters in 1978," Miller said. "We are well below the limit by $46.6 million."

Mayor Barry Brucker closed the budgetary portion of the council meeting by thanking city staffers involved in financial planning.

"When somebody made the comment 'gee, it happened so quickly' that we approved [the budget], it wasn't that we hadn't done our homework or that we hadn't asked a lot of questions, some on-camera, some off-camera," Brucker said. "It was ... that you gave us such thorough reporting, it made it so much easier to understand than ever before."

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