The Paul Nelson Aquatic Center’s potential six-month closure really got Santa Maria residents interested in what the city is doing with its budget!
With 120 public comment letters submitted prior to the City Council’s discussion about the next two-year budget cycle on June 2, the city had no choice but to listen. The meeting was noisy!
Mayor Alice Patino let everyone know that the city took their concerns seriously.
“We are listening to the community’s feedback,” she said. “Our goal is to address the current budget concerns and collaboratively work to explore any kind of resolution that we can have and to preserve that year-round access.”
The “budget concerns” are not insignificant. It’s a more than $18 million deficit over the next two years, which follows two years of tight budgets in which the city had already trimmed off a lot of the excess fat.
As city Finance Director Rebecca Campbell put it: The city has a lot more to do.
Facing potential layoffs in upcoming years and the need to possibly sell off city-owned property, it may seem like the $344,000 Santa Maria could save by closing the pool for a few months is small potatoes. But without those cost savings, the city has to look elsewhere.
Perhaps, the budget ad hoc committee and the Paul Nelson reps will find a middle ground. Maybe fees to use the pool will increase (as Patino put it, the city subsidizes 75 percent of the cost for running the pool) or swimmers won’t be so quick to complain that the pool’s temperature is off by a few degrees—it costs money to heat the pool even one degree.
One thing’s for sure, closing the pool for several months is a nonstarter with city residents. Closing the library for eight hours a week? Not a big deal!
The reserve fund mix-up caught thanks to a city audit (the city was accidentally double-counting reserve dollars)? Not a big deal! And poor Campbell, who has a little more than year under her belt at the city, gets to take on the fix, which she seems adamant about.
“We’re going to solve this deficit. We are. We have to,” she told the council on June 2.
She’s not wrong. All governments are trying to decrease their deficits. Costs are up, revenues are stagnant, federal and state funding is uncertain, and if ballot tax measures on the Santa Barbara County primary ballot are any indication of how people feel about giving more money to local governments, it’s not good!
Lompoc asked its voters to set aside half a cent in extra sales tax to pay for its road maintenance. That special tax needed two-thirds of voters to pass it. Well, it wouldn’t even have passed if it just needed a simple majority—although Councilmember Jeremy Ball has convinced himself that something like that would pass. Only about 47 percent of city voters opted to support the measure.
“Lompoc does need the revenue—and I get that no one likes new taxes—but there’s that half cent that’s left, and eventually the county will take it from us,” he said.
Maximum sales tax in the state is 9.25 percent. Lompoc’s sales tax is currently at 8.75 percent. Whoever bites first gets it?
The Canary’s not a biter. Send pecks to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in June 11 – June 18, 2026.
