The Seal Beach City Council unanimously approved the final budget for 2014-15 at the council’s Monday, June 9, meeting.
As previously reported, the budget is balanced and has a surplus.
At least two Seal Beach residents have recently called for a reduction of the city’s 11 percent Utility Users Tax, one at Monday’s council meeting and the other in a comment at sunnews.org. However, the utility tax was not on the agenda.
City Manager Jill Ingram outlined the budget for the council in a letter that introduced the draft budget.
“The General Fund budget presented includes operating expenditures of $31.9 million and capital project expenditures of $3.2 million,” Ingram said.
“Total General Fund revenues are estimated at $28.7 million for Fiscal Year 2014-2015, revenues,” Ingram said.
According to the May 29 budget workshop presentation, staff projected a $386,000 increase in property tax.
“In Fiscal Year 2014-2015, the projected revenue decrease is primarily due to continued sales declines in the petroleum products industry,” Ingram said.
Victoria Beatley, the city’s finance director and treasurer, told the council that the projected surplus for the coming fiscal year would be about $20,000 after adjustments made at recent budget workshops.
“Surplus is created when revenues exceed expenses. Typically any surplus would increase the Unassigned Fund Balance,” Beatley told the Sun.
Some surplus money was committed to grants. For example, $80,000 went to the Salon Meritage memorial and $100,000 went to the Seal Beach Centennial.
Last week, Beatley said the reserves could go as high as $27.7 million.
The budget glossary defined a reserve as “an account used to indicate that a portion of fund balance is legally restricted for a specific purpose, or is otherwise not available for appropriation and subsequent spending.”
Old Town real estate agent Joyce Parque, a frequent critic of the City Council, said it was time to talk about reducing the Utility Users Tax. She said that taxpayers should also get compensation for living in Seal Beach.
She said Seal Beach had one of the highest utility taxes.
In a recent online post at blog.sunnews.org, resident Mark Dennison also argued in favor of reducing the tax.
“My understanding from those close to the City budget is the UUT could realistically and easily be REDUCED to 8 percent,” he said. (For his complete comment, see page 6.)
However, city staff has recommended keeping the utility tax at the current 11 percent.
The only other California city with an 11 percent Utility Users Tax is Culver City.
However, Seal Beach’s tax does not apply to sewer, cable TV and garbage pick-up.
. According to Robert Goldberg, a planning commissioner and Seal Beach city budget watcher, 90 percent of UTT revenue is used for Seal Beach’s day-to-day operational costs.
Goldberg said that if the UTT were cut to 10 percent, Seal Beach would not have a balanced budget.
