Ross Valley towns close budget gaps the less hard way

Fairfax officials spent the weekend closing the gap on a proposed budget with some fairly painless machinations. 

While down the road in San Anselmo, town leaders achieved a balanced budget this summer through tweaks after years of tough decisions.

The Fairfax Town Council is expected to sign off on a budget for 2010-11 at its Oct. 6 meeting after giving the thumbs up this past Saturday to a handful of measures sealing up an anticipated $205,000 shortfall. Changes include a temporary hiring freeze for a couple open positions and reducing the town's public works director to a part-time position.

Mayor Lew Tremaine said after Saturday's session, he was "feeling pretty good about things.

"Things are where we expect them to be," he said. "We have a balanced budget and that's a good thing."

Town Manager Michael Rock said to help fill the town's deficit, they'll delay replacing a senior maintenance worker who retired and filling the spot left by Sgt. Chris Morin, recently promoted to police chief.

In San Anselmo, Town Manager Debbie Stutsman said prior years of painful cuts paved the way for them to close the gap on an expected $300,000 shortfall this year without pay cuts, furloughs, or staffing cuts.

The town, which -- like many others -- has been hit hard by reductions in property taxes and sales taxes in the slumping economy, saw its workforce shrink from 63 people in 2003 to a current level of 52 since 2006.

"I feel that's why we're in pretty good shape and have a balanced budget this year," Stutsman said of the town's nearly $14 million annual budget approved in July. "We've been very conservative."

To bridge that $300,000 gap, Stutsman said department heads were tasked months back with shaving two percent out of their budgets, which she termed "cutting around the edges."

She said changes were mainly internal and wouldn't affect services to the community. The biggest change, Stutsman said, was altering how the police department did their scheduling to help reduce overtime.

Though Fairfax has yet to sign on the dotted line for this year, Rock is encouraging leaders to look beyond for a better financial future. 

The town is launching what he termed a fiscal sustainability plan, which the council will begin discussing later this year.

"In a nutshell, it's a long-range budget that deals with what we know are structural deficits with the budget," Rock said. "We'll address how to fix that now and the next five years and give ourselves a blueprint on how to budget each of the next five budgets."

He said sustainability plan workshops would touch on the hot topic of skyrocketing costs for medical care and retirement. Revenue ideas would also be addressed.

Rock said the hope was to have something adopted by early January to help ease the accounting pain for next year.