After some juggling on the accounting front, Los Gatos says it’s managed to come up with a budget that boasts a $30,000 surplus.
The Town Council approved the yearly financial plan on June 6.
The Town plans to spend slightly more from its General Fund ($54.5 million) than it believes it will see in revenues ($53.2 million) in fiscal year 2023/24.
Accounting for all incoming dollars ($71.1 million) as well as money it will take on a one-time basis from General Fund reserves ($2.4 million), the Town is showing $73.5 million in revenues, compared with $75.6 million in expenditures (including $10.7 million for capital projects).
Los Gatos entered $140,000 more for property taxes than it first estimated, a little over $800,000 additional from the Educational Realignment Augmentation Fund monies and more than $300,000 extra in hotel taxes.
Los Gatos Director of Finance Gitta Ungvari said Covid-19 funds from the Biden Administration were being moved to the General Fund, after some of the regulations about how to handle the dollars were loosened.
“We are fully going to expend the ARPA funds,” she said.
Mayor Maria Ristow said the only thing that wasn’t being approved was the part about wages, because that section of the report wasn’t properly noticed.
“The staff report contains the salary schedules, but because of a glitch with the agenda, those items were not listed,” she said. “So, we can discuss it tonight, but we can’t vote on the salary schedules until our meeting on June 20.”
Councilmember Rob Moore said, despite having studied the financial documents, he still wasn’t clear about whether the Town was in the red or the black.
“Surplus is mentioned a few different times in here, in a few different ways,” he commented. “Did we end up with a surplus, and if so, what is that number?”
Ungvari gave him the rundown.
“So, if you’re asking if we are ending up (with) a surplus for Fiscal Year 2022-23, we anticipate that we are going to end up with a surplus, but we don’t know exactly until we close the fiscal year,” she said. “But, during the budget time we anticipated around $700,000 (is) what I believe.”
And she addressed the upcoming year, too—reminding him of how Council had directed staff to assume it would hire fewer people, which would free up enough money to balance the budget, if barely.
“If you are asking about the proposed budget, the Fiscal Year 2023-24 Budget has a very tiny surplus, just because the movement what happened during the Council meeting, about building in the 4.6% vacancy factor,” she said. “It created probably a $30,000 surplus.”
Local resident Lee Fagot said he was happy to see around $47 million for items like roadwork, noting, “—which is good that we’re focusing on safety.”
In fact, he said it was his highest priority.
“However, we’ve had three fatalities on Blossom Hill Road over the last three-and-a-half years or so,” he said, adding he lives in the area and hears screeching tires and loud exhaust systems as cars race up and down the route, frequently. “I also travel Blossom Hill Road probably 3-4 times a week to visit my grandchildren. The speeders on that road are scary as heck. And I believe what we could be doing is a little more police enforcement of the traffic, and that we can help reduce that damage to the citizens.”
Fagot said he’d also like to see the Town take more action to get drivers to slow down.
Parks and Public Works Director Nicolle Burnham said the Town is embarking on some traffic calming measures along the street this summer—including near Blossom Hill Elementary School.
The staff report also included a table Council members said they found helpful, which outlined what Los Gatos did with the $7.2 million gift it got from the feds to keep the community alive during the pandemic.
It showed the Town’s spent $6.4 million on everything from rent waivers, to destination marketing, to parklets, to direct grants, to Promenade street parties, and still has $866,281 left.
Council will decide, later this summer, whether to splurge on one big ticket item or divvy the relief cash up among different groups, before the deadline.
The current budget includes one-time financial infusions and rent forgiveness to community groups like Los Gatos-Saratoga Community Education and Recreation, KCAT, for homeless service providers and to New Museum Los Gatos.
Councilmember Matthew Hudes said he was disappointed Los Gatos didn’t handle the American Rescue Plan Act dollars in a separate fund, the way Saratoga did, even though staff worked with the same money manager.
Ungvari said everything was earmarked correctly and staff has been tracking the flow from Washington to Los Gatos diligently.
Councilmember Rob Rennie made the motion to approve the budget, with Hudes seconding it.
It was approved unanimously.
