City Council Delays Budget Talks Again

Near the end of an eight-hour meeting, a divided City Council delayed talks on its upcoming budget for the second straight time, forcing it to consider a special meeting to deal with the city’s 1997-99 financial plan.

After a full agenda Tuesday night and comments from eight residents on the budget, the council voted 3 to 2 to delay talks rather than start them at 12:05 a.m. Wednesday.

“This is the second time we have scheduled a budget meeting and this is the second time the council majority has chosen to postpone,” said Councilwoman Karen Lloreda, who voted with Councilman Harold R. Kaufman against postponement.

But Mayor Bill Ossenmacher said the public would be ill-served by the council’s wrangling with an issue as important as the budget at such a late hour, and added that the meeting ran so long “because certain council members persist in going over items again and again.”

Most of the meeting was taken up with council and resident discussions of possible improvements to senior services at the Del Obispo Park Community Center, and the fate of a proposed senior center at a vacant house in dormant Creekside Park. The house was donated to the city and moved to the park in 1994, and ever since council members, nearby residents and seniors have been at odds over its fate and the future of the park.

The council voted to postpone until July a decision on possibly selling the Creekside home as surplus city property. And it voted 4 to 1 to have city staff draft an expansion plan for the Del Obispo center, with Lloreda opposing.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the council hadn’t set a date for the special budget meeting, City Clerk Kathie M. Mendoza said.

The city’s operating budget expires June 30, and the council has one regularly scheduled meeting left before then--on June 24--to discuss, amend and approve the new $30-million budget for the next two years.