Opinion: City officials should have known San Bernardino was on the ropes
Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the July 11, 2012, San Bernardino Sun.
San Bernardino appears poised to become the third California city to file for bankruptcy protection so far this year.
Citing the ongoing economic downturn, lack of recovery in the housing market and state funding take-aways, the City Council voted Tuesday to file Chapter 9. Without filing for bankruptcy, officials said, the city probably could not meet its Aug. 15 payroll.
In recent weeks, the cities of Stockton and Mammoth Lakes made similar moves.
If San Bernardino’s decision seems sudden, however, it’s really not.
The city has been struggling to reinvent itself for years and has been particularly hard hit by the recession. At the same time, city leaders have spent too much time politicking and feuding and obviously not enough time scrutinizing the city’s finances.
Were they surprised when Acting City Manager Andrea Travis-Miller and Finance Director Jason Simpson reported to the council only two weeks ago that San Bernardino has a $45 million budget deficit?
City Attorney James Penman said at the meeting Tuesday that for 13 of the past 16 years, the council had been given falsified budget documents – showing the city in the black when it was actually in the red. Did they just discover this?
having lived in the inland empire most of my life this comes as no surprise sanberdo is notorious for miss management
Time to look at the 2011-12 Grand Jury report. Cities are a thing of the past. Waste money, provide liittle service. We need to take the model from business and consolidate and redirest our efforts. For example serives can support a broader base which mean more people contributing to cost and we can organize local committees that deal with the issue. You get both, local control on the issue and a broad finacial base.
The county is not doing any better with managing it’s resources or budget,and neither is the state. Our best option for survival is to remain a city and manage our resources more efficiently, which is the current direction in many areas of our town.
Your agenda is not “hidden” Mr. Long, and it is my belief that the majority of our citizens do agree with your stance.
Sorry, should have been “do NOT agree with your stance.”
Cities and Counties provide duplicate services! Even if one feels the need or desire to maintain some control by staying a City, we should at the very least consolidate services with the County! And we are quite far from being an efficiently run City!
And our City would do much better job of justifying its existence if would fix the streets, rather than sitting on that Reserve!!
Too bad we didn’t make last years cuts back in 2008 when we still had time to save the city.
If we were to consolidate the city and county, the area to be protected would still be the same number of square miles, requiring basically the same number of staff. The big difference is we would be “governed” by people who do not live here, in a basin, surrounded by tinder and isolated by geography much of the time.
If you want to see a sampling of the geniuses that vote in P-ville and surrounding areas who would be governing the Lake, take a look at the Mountain Democrat nutcase newspaper they have.
The Tahoe “Daily” Tribune is any better??
If consolidation would occur you wouldn’t need all the upper mgt. Also, you would eliminate a little game that goes on, of when one entity gets a raise, the other entity cries out, “We have to match it to stay competitive!”
The more employees you have, the more management you would have, so while the “guy at the top” might be only one instead of two, doesn’t mean money would be saved. The “game” of being competitive will never end, because then our county would compare to Douglas County or Placer County or one of the other surrounding areas. I still say better to have our people, who understand our town, governing what happens here. Just think about it: how much does the state listen to us regarding Lake Tahoe? How much does the county representation listen to what we want versus what they think is best for us?
I think Douglas County does a FINE job for its citizens; it manages to get California and the City of SLT to pay for most of the expenses at its south-western edge.
I’ll gladly take the savings of eliminating some of those 100k + salaries, plus benefits! And consolidating with the County won’t eliminate the salary games, but would reduce it.
If we’re ever going to tackle our bloated, unsustainable bureacracy, we must stop rationalizing it. And rather, have to start!, confronting and reducing it!
I agree, Dogula! That is part of the problem – South Lake Tahoe needs to STOP giving money to Nevada and take care of SLT first.
Parker, we may just have to agree to disagree. I just don’t believe we would save money; the county is no better at keeping top management numbers or salaries under control than the city. What we would sacrifice by giving the county control over us would far outweigh any perceived benefit, and I don’t believe Mr. Long has our best interests at heart.