Culver City Observer -

Council Hears Department Budget Overviews

Working up to next week’s approval of the 2013-2914 Budget for Culver City, the City Council Monday and Tuesday heard presentations from each city department on its budget for the next fiscal year.

To sum up what this budget looks like, Assistant City Manager Martin Cole described the budget as “status quo.”

“There aren’t the drastic cuts of two years ago,” Cole told the Observer. But he said the budget was more or less the same as last year’s as the Council tends toward conservatism in economic matters and wants to make sure there are enough funds to last the whole fiscal year.

A department that has weathered those drastic cuts is Community Development, whose director, Sol Blumenfeld, gave a presentation during Tuesday’s meeting that did not even quote budget numbers.

Council members praised Blumenfeld for “putting on a brave face” while listing his department’s goals in the teeth of the dissolution of the Redevelopment Agency, once the department’s busy center.

Blumenfeld explained that Community Development is divided into five sub-departments: Administration, Planning, Building and Safety, Enforcement, and Economic Development. Community Development has 42 full and part-time staffers, although staff was been cut by one third last year.

The former Redevelopment Agency is now “The Successor Agency” and has inherited a number of projects from Redevelopment, including Parcel B, Washington/National, Washington/Centinela, and Hayden Tract Spur.

The Housing Authority, a subdivision devoted to building affordable housing, also has several projects in the works, including Tilden Terrace, Glove Avenue, and Irving Place.

The Successor Agency projects are to be funded by bonds but have been stalled due to the state’s delay in releasing those bonds.

Blumenfeld also noted that while the state mandates cities to provide affordable housing, its elimination of funding for same leaves cities like Culver City no way of doing so.

“We might be able to use existing former agency assets,” he said. “There are for example, parking lots that, as long as they could still be used for parking, we could build above them.”

Council member Mehaul O’ Leary suggested the city’s web site should feature a clock (much like the clocks that measure how many deaths there are from smoking) that would symbolize how much money is being lost in potential revenue from the projects held up by the state’s delay in releasing funds in order to save money.

Another city department, Parks and Recreation, has a total budget of $7,231,159, a 1.6 increase from last year. There are 32.59 full-time positions. The increase in revenues is due to fees (mostly rental fees) “that have been in place for years,” said Parks and Rec Director Daniel Hernandez.

Parks and Rec has managed to achieve some of its goals, including the building of a playground, irrigation system upgrades, and acquisition of new PAC exercise equipment. Other goals, such as creating new sports programs, are on hold because of a lack of facilities. Hernandez hopes that public-private partnerships with existing facilities such as the YMCA might help in this regard.