City Council Approves Budget for 2011-12 Fiscal Year, City Trees an Issue

After heavy discussion, the council approved and adopted the annual budget and investment policy for the fiscal year 2011-12 during its June 23 meeting.

City Budget Administrator Geri DeMasi delivered the specifics of the item which, according to DeMasi, was presented and reviewed in great detail during a.

“We believe that this represents a prudent and comprehensive work program that reflects the current economy yet also addresses the community service and program needs for the coming year,” DeMasi said.

DeMasi said for the City of Cerritos, there is an operating budget of $88,830,092 and a city capital improvements budget of $2,126,250. This amounts to a total city budget of $90,957,170. As for the Cerritos Redevelopment Agency, Administrative and operating expenses amount to $30,502,440, and for capital improvements, $175,000. This amounts to a total redevelopment agency budget $30,677,440. Finally, low income and moderate housing expenditures come in at $6,000,000. So the combined city and agency total amounts to $127,634,610.

Councilmember Mark Pulido said the one area he found disappointing in the budget was that there is a significant cut in the public works budget from three years ago, which since hasn’t been replaced. During Pulido’s city council campaign earlier this year, one of his focuses was on maintaining Cerritos’ status as a tree city. According to Pulido, he literally had hundreds of conversations with residents on what their priorities were for the city, and more often than not, they expressed concern over the trees right in front of their houses.

“They talked about that often times the trees are grown, not trimmed as it should be,” Pulido said. “Often times the roots were causing problems, cracking their sidewalk, and in some extreme cases, causing problems with their plumbing.”

City Manager Art Gallucci said the city expects a couple more years of down economy, and that he’s not able to project when the public works budget is expected to gain back funding. According to Gallucci, the trimming of a large tree is about $100 per tree. There are 36 trees in Cerritos that are maintained and managed. Because of the over $9,000,000 cut in public works, tree trimming has been extended to every four to five years.

“We’re falling behind in tree trimming,” he said. "That is absolutely correct. We had to cut somewhere in that department.”

Gallucci added that cuts were made to the tree-trimming budget over street maintenance funding.

Pulido also made a motion that the city discontinue the use of traffic cameras, remove them from the budget and conduct a study of the cameras’ safety due to his and residents’ concerns of whether or not the cameras are effective and serve their purpose; however, his motion was not seconded nor entertained by the council.

Pulido wanted to know the reason for the recent increase in revenue generated by the city from $460,000 to $600,000 and its relation to the traffic cameras. This caused an intense back and forth between Mayor Carol Chen and Pulido. When this concern was brought to the council’s attention, Chen immediately asked Pulido if he had read her response to the local community’s issue with traffic signals.

“Did you read how the red light camera is being monitored by staff in terms of efficiency, in terms of accuracy, in terms of how much of a deterrent has brought down the collision?” Chen asked Pulido.

According to Hal Arbogast, the city’s Director of Public Works and City Engineer, the reason for the increase in revenue is due to the ever-improving technology provided by American Traffic Solutions. Arbogast explained that because the number of citations issued per actual violation has increased due to accuracy, more revenue is generated from the citations.

The next Cerritos City Council meeting will be held on July 14.