One thing you can always count on when an item involving a cooperative agreement between the city of Lompoc and the county of Santa Barbara is that Councilman Dirk Starbuck will oppose it every time. Even though he is usually wrong in his assumptions, at least he is consistent. The other thing you can count on is that Councilman Victor Vega will probably support his objection even when facts indicate he is wrong.
The most recent “no” vote concerned a proposal for the city to join in a Consolidated Dispatch Center for fire and emergency medical services. The center would be operated by the county and managed by a board consisting of all fire agencies that signed up to the agreement; any changes to the system would require unanimous approval by the board, thus assuring that no one agency could dominate the systems’ management or fees.
This was a very good deal because Lompoc would only pay based on the number of calls the center processed that originated in our city and be provided much improved enhancements to the way medical and fire emergencies were handled.
But true to his principles, Starbuck threw a bunch of barn dust into the debate and in the process convinced Councilman Vega to join him in opposing the project.
Chief among Starbuck’s concerns was where the money was going to come from to pay for this new service. Well, voters had answered that question twice—once by approving a sales tax increase and again by approving a cannabis manufacturing tax.
But it was Starbuck and Vega along with former Councilman Jim Mosby who had diverted all the sales tax money for the next 15 years to theoretically “save $20 million in retirement system payments,” so there was none of this new revenue left, and both Starbuck and Vega couldn’t grasp the fact that the city manager affirmed three times during the hearing that anticipated revenue from the cannabis manufacturing tax would be more than adequate to fund the agreement.
Starbuck was also complaining about the current budget shortfalls as justification to resist joining the Consolidated Dispatch Center. He correctly stated that we are about $200,000 in the hole.
Here is what the adopted 2021-23 budget says about that: “The adopted biennial budget for [fiscal years] 2021-23 general fund reflects a surplus of $2 million. The projected surplus is vital to restore the general fund’s depleted unassigned fund balance. As of June 30, 2020, the city’s unassigned fund balance was negative $0.2 million.”
The Law Insider Dictionary says “surplus funds” means, “at any given date, the excess of cash and other recognized assets that are expected to be resolved into cash or its equivalent in the natural course of events and with a reasonable certainty, over the liabilities and necessary reserves at the same date.”
The Government Accounting Standards Board describes how to use the “unassigned classification” this way: “The unassigned classification should be used only to report a deficit balance resulting from overspending for specific purposes for which amounts had been restricted, committed, or assigned.”
From these statements you could draw two conclusions: 1) There is a surplus of $2 million that is “expected to be resolved into cash or its equivalent in the natural course of events”; and 2) the unassigned fund balance was negative $0.2 million “resulting from overspending for specific purposes.”
So, a reasonable person could assume that the $200,000 should be erased by the $2 million surplus during the two-year budget cycle.
The other point Starbuck wanted to make in defense of his “no” vote was that the reserve fund had been depleted. When he was elected in 2010, the general fund reserve balance was $6.5 million. He says it’s zero now; was he correct? Yes, however you must follow the events that have occurred since 2010, all of which he was part of.
In 2014, Mosby was appointed as a council member while the reserve fund was still a healthy $6.6 million; he, Starbuck, and Vega controlled the budget approval process in the following budget hearings until the 2019-21 budget.
Led by Mosby, they thought they were budget geniuses and micromanaged the process. Ultimately this led to the 2017-19 budget showing a decline in budget reserves to $4.5 million, and by the 2019-21 budget it had shrunk to half the amount when they took office. Starbuck, Vega, and Mosby supported each of those budgets.
The 2021-23 budget addresses the problem this way: “The City Council’s adopted general fund reserve policy target is 25 percent of annual expenditures of approximately $11 million. While the (current) surplus is a positive achievement for Lompoc, the general fund will require an additional $9 million to follow the city’s funding policy and restore the general fund’s reserve fund to the target of $11 million. Each budget for the next four budget cycles will attempt to restore full reserves.”
So, city staff is managing the problem. Now it’s up to future City Councils to assure that the plan is implemented and they don’t spend every penny of the revenue they receive.
Lastly, this agreement doesn’t come in to play until 2024. Revenue from the cannabis manufacturing tax will begin early next year. The city manager said three separate times that he anticipates that this new revenue stream will more than pay for this project.
I use all of this to demonstrate why Councilmen Starbuck and Vega, who both cast no votes to join the Consolidated Dispatch Center, used a condition that they helped create and failed to consider future revenue sources to justify throwing public safety under the bus.
Fortunately, they are no longer in the majority, and the matter passed on a 3-2 vote.
Ron Fink writes to the Sun from Lompoc. Send a response via the editor at clanham@antamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 18-25, 2021.