Encinitas will pay for two more sheriff’s deputies to do traffic enforcement and increase its fire prevention efforts in the coming fiscal year.
But a proposal to hire a consultant to produce a historic preservation document and two requests from the city’s Chamber of Commerce for extra funding won’t initially be included in the coming year’s budget, a majority of the City Council decided during a recent special workshop session.
“We have some basic priorities that have been neglected,” Mayor Bruce Ehlers said as he explained why he was ing some spending requests, including the extra deputies and some storm drain upgrades, but not the chamber’s items. “Let’s get the crime fixed and then we’ll get the marketing fixed.”
During the two-hour meeting — the third of three budget workshops in the past month — council considered some three dozen potential items that could go into the coming year’s budget, picking some for funding and delaying decisions on others. Using that information, city finance employees now will produce a draft spending plan. It’s scheduled to be unveiled at the council’s May 28 meeting.
The council is expected to give its final approval to the proposed budget June 18, and the new fiscal year begins July 1.
Council unanimously ed the proposal to add two traffic deputies, who would catch drunken drivers and speeding motorists. The initial cost will be $458,000 for each deputy, but that’s a first-year figure that includes providing them with a vehicle — and the price will be lower the following year, City Manager Jennifer Campbell said.
Several fire prevention proposals, including $60,000 to pay for additional vegetation removal on public property and $24,000 for a fire evacuation guide and fire evacuation signage, also had unanimous council .
Plans to purchase computer software and shift to a license-plate reading system for enforcing the city’s permit parking zones — estimated to cost $80,000 — received from the mayor and Council Jim O’Hara, Marco San Antonio and Luke Shaffer. They said it would allow the city to get ahead of parking issues that will likely accompany the large, multi-family housing developments now being built in town.
“I feel like this parking situation is only going to get worse,” San Antonio said as he described how he’s hearing about street parking problems near the now-under-construction Fox Pointe Farms development, which is not in a permit parking zone.
Councilmember Joy Lyndes said she couldn’t the request, saying, “I see it as a ‘would like,’ not urgent.”
When it came to the chamber’s requests — $65,000 for the new Visit Encinitas program and $45,000 to expand other chamber programs — council said they wanted to hold off on funding them for now.
Ehlers said the council could revisit the issue partway through the next fiscal year after it has a better handle how much extra cash it has on hand. Among other things, he said, the city is expecting to receive federal reimbursement for an emergency storm drain repair project and some of that money could be used for new programs and projects.
The council divided over whether to fund a request for a consultant-created “historic context statement” that would help neighborhoods establish historic preservation districts. Lyndes, who ed the proposal, said some people who live in the Cardiff composers’ area — a region of streets named after musicians — are interested in creating such a district.
O’Hara and San Antonio said they considered the request a “want” not a “need” and could not it, while Ehlers and Shaffer said they might it later in the year.
