The Los Alamitos City Council approved its new fiscal year budget this week by a 3-2 vote after the two no votes expressed dismay at either the technical flaws in the budget and questionable items like “fancy trash cans.”
According to Finance Director Craig Koehler, the city’s proposed 2023-24 budget is $23.2 million, and the ‘24-‘25 proposed budget is $22.1 million.
Included in next year’s budget is a series of so-called capital improvement projects, which are generally improvement projects across the city.
The Council’s two newest members, Trisha Murphy and Emily Hibard, who at the last meeting voted against the adoption of the budget, had clearly not been able to resolve their differences as they peppered city staff with questions about seeming inaccuracies in the budget document and in some cases, some items that seemed overpriced.
“As a council, it is our responsibility to ensure that numerical errors do not repeatedly occur in the budget and that money received from the public is utilized responsibly, effectively and conservatively with the highest integrity as well,” said Murphy, who reminded the Council she has two decades of experience as a financial executive.
During the hours-long review of the 2023-24 budget document, which is hundreds of pages long, Murphy repeatedly pointed out what she considered to be inaccurate citations, math that did not add up, and misapplication of programs.
The questions, mostly directed at city manager Chet Simmons and Finance Director Craig Koehler, ranged from pension liabilities, police programs, and capital improvement projects (CIPs).
For instance, Murphy said “on page 773, it has Bloomfield Street improvement project pending measure L for 300,000. And then on page 750, it has Bloomfield Street improvement project $300,000 for the gas tax. Neither one of those pages referenced indicates that there is a sharing of different funding.”
Simmons said the Council was out of time to approve the budget, but he did suggest a process by which some of the programs in question could be re-evaluated.
“To the Council, if I can make a suggestion that I think might be helpful here. The budget itself, while we do have a requirement that it has to be approved by July 1, the opportunity to actually have the CIP list taken back and actually provide a full breakdown of where exactly all the different funds are coming from, I think might be beneficial for the council because it answers a lot of these questions,” said Simmons.
Hibard, meanwhile, questioned “vague” pricing and other items that seemed interesting.
“There is a line item on here for $250,000 for fancy trash cans. I grew up in Downey on the 710 freeway, it’s known as the corruption corridor, and whatever City’s corrupt it always starts with the trash. This stands out to me because of my experience in the corruption corridor. It looks like a kickback. How do we get to $250,000 for fancy trash cans that, to my understanding, nothing’s wrong with the current trash cans? But these would be fancy trash cans,” asked Hibard.
Also, said Hibard, “I was wondering if someone can explain to me the backup generator project and how we arrived at a whopping $650,000 for a generator (for the city).”
Development Services Director Ron Noda said this was only an estimate provided to the city by a qualified engineering firm.
A frustrated Council member, Shelley Hasselbrink, said the time for discussion was over.
“I’m just concerned because last month it failed because my colleagues needed more information and here it is, a month later, and they need more information and at some point we just need to start doing the business of the city,” said Hasselbrink.
“We didn’t require any further information,” said Murphy. I was actually informing every one of the inaccuracies and numerical errors that I located after discussing the budget,” she said.
“I took the time over the last month to discuss and ask the questions necessary. I took hours of my time and out of my family’s time to make sure that this is accurate for the community because this is their money,” she said.
Hibard asked Simmons if the Council could either split the items to vote on the budget or perhaps have a special meeting before July 1 so that all the questions could be answered.
“I think it’s going to take some time you all are going to have questions and then we will need to go back and cross-reference where exactly those questions come from, and I do believe that a lot of this has to do with making sure that we can break down each one of the different CIP projects for you. So I don’t see that being able to be done within 24 hours,” said Simmons.
Hibard actually made a motion to split the budget vote, seconded by Murphy, but it failed 2-3, with Haselbrink, Mayor Tanya Doby, and Mayor Pro-tem Jordan Nefulda voting against the motion.
Simmons told the Council that they would be in violation of the city charter if they did not approve a budget by July 1.
Ultimately, Hasselbrink moved the budget resolution and it passed 3-2, with Doby and Nefulda also voting yes, with Murphy and Hibard voting no.
“I think it is very irresponsible for the council to proceed with approving a budget that has terrible errors in it, because anyone who has reviewed any financials will know you will not approve anything if it is inaccurate. You don’t do that with any agreement. So, with that, I am just infuriated. I’m just going to say as (President) Ronald Reagan said,