Citrus Heights budget in good shape, officials say

Dan King
CNS Staff Writer

Citrus Heights employees aren’t facing benefit cuts, furloughs or layoffs despite an economy that has many other public agencies issuing pink slips.

The city has a reserve of $35 million, which exceeds their annual operating budget of $30 million, officials announced Thursday.

City Manager Henry Tingle said the city is less affected by the downturn because of its mid-range retail base and conservative spending. The city’s revenue is down this year by $750,000 but because of the reserve funds, the decrease will not result in loss of employees or benefits.

“Our primary revenue generation is retail,” Tingle said. “We were affected on the retail side, but most of our retail isn’t the high-end retail.”

Unlike many communities, Citrus Heights is not reeling from a decline in new construction. The city, which incorporated in 1997, has never had large swaths of land available for development.

“Our model never depended on growth,” Tingle said. “We knew we weren’t going to have growth. Where we had to focus our attention was cleaning up our neighborhoods, fixing up our streets, making our community safe and more attractive for people to buy their first home here.”

Gary Gordon, vice president of the Northwest Neighborhood Association, offered another reason for the city’s success.

“If it wasn’t for Henry Tingle, we’d be broke like all the other local cities,” Gordon said. “Citrus Heights doesn’t have a big staff, but they aren’t facing layoffs or furloughing workers.”

Tingle said the city doesn’t negotiate salary increases for the workforce until they have an idea how much money they will have in the coming year. If the revenue is up, salaries can be increased; if revenue doesn’t increase, salaries stay flat.

“There’s always the concept if we aren’t competitive we are going to lose people,” Tingle said. “Even the good paying cities lose good people. Nobody has done a detailed analysis of how much you are really impacted because your salary or benefits are lower than your neighbors. So everyone is under the delusion they have to keep up with the Joneses.”

Tingle said the city has tried to always stay within its means. It doesn’t increase the size of the staff in good times, so it doesn’t have to reduce it in hard times, he said.

The civic center is paid off, and construction on the community center across the street didn’t start until the city could come up with $10.5 million to pay for it.

“Everything you see around here, the citizens of Citrus Heights own outright,” Tingle said.

The city has a 10-year budget plan, which is adjusted every six months. The plan evaluates how spending will affect the city long term.

“We do struggle at times with resurfacing and repaving our roads,” said City Council Member Steve Miller. “We have to really plan ahead and prioritize what needs to get done and then make sure it gets done.”

The city sent about $3 million this year in property taxes to Sacramento County as part of its revenue neutrality agreement, which was a condition of incorporation designed to offset the loss of revenue to the county. The agreement is set up on a sliding scale, and allots property tax revenue to the county until 2021-2022.

According to a 2007 survey conducted by BW Research Partnership and paid for by the city, 89 percent of residents surveyed said they were satisfied with the job the city is doing and 50.5 percent said they were very satisfied.

Mayor James Shelby has served on the City Council since incorporation. He said the credit for the city’s success belongs to Tingle and his staff.

“The key is Tingle and his staff have worked for other cities with large budget problems,” he said. “They decided if they were ever in position to control things, they wouldn’t face the same problems. They would spend the budget wisely, and be aware it is the taxpayers’ money.”