Politics & Government

Santee Mayor Says He's Tired of Cutting City Jobs

The City of Santee has eliminated 24.8 positions since 2009- a number that upset many of the councilmembers.

Santee Mayor Randy Voepel's initial reaction to a report on upcoming city budgets: "Is there any good news? I'm getting depressed."

The Santee City Council has been hearing reports about the state of city revenue and expenditures over the last few meetings, detailed reports on firefighters and the Sheriff 's Department, and last week a general report on factors impacting upcoming budgets. As City Manager Keith Till put it, "budget season is in full swing."

Find out what's happening in Santeewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The city has eliminated 24.8 positions since 2009- a number that upset many of the councilmembers.

"I'm getting kind of tired of cutting city employees," said Voepel.

Find out what's happening in Santeewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Councilmembers said the city may have to sacrifice a bit of capital improvements to the city's infrastructure for the city's "people infrastructure." The one-two punch of the recession and nixing of redevelopment funds put the city's budget in a crunch in the last few years.

"We've cut as much as we can possibly cut when it comes to staffing," said Councilmember Rob McNelis. "We need to start looking at other possibilities. We see a lot of potential income in our city's future than we see at this second."

It has been five years since the city last raised employee salaries to account for cost of living adjustments.

Health insurance costs for the city could rise by as much as 13 percent for the next fiscal year, according to the report.

The city's contract with the Sheriff's Department is set to rise by $923,000 in the next fiscal year, with additional annual increases of about $500,000 after that.

As for the good news the Mayor was looking for, Finance Director Tim McDermott said property tax is up for the first time in four years- up 2 percent, showing a restoration of some of the value, he said.

More bad news came from Councilmember Jack Dale.

"We went up on all of our crime rates, we've got to be careful with that," said Dale, referring to the recently released SANDAG Annual Crime Report.

"Crime went up in a lot of different cities," replied Santee Station Sheriff's Captain Lisa Miller.

The council will be presented with a draft of the budget at the May 22 meeting, and will have to decide on the budget details by July 1.

Also read: Mayor: Santee 'Hot and Sweaty' in Talks for New Movie Theater


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