Thousand Oaks City Council Passes Budget

After removing $1 million tied to demolishing one of the city’s oldest schools and delaying $262,000 in salary adjustments, the Thousand Oaks City Council on Tuesday night approved a budget for next fiscal year.

The nearly $168-million budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 is part of a two-year financial blueprint that anticipates revenue and expenditures approaching $158 million in fiscal 2004-05.

“We’re really happy that we have a spending plan in place. And we’re looking forward to dealing with the state budget impacts this summer,” interim City Manager Candis Hong, who as finance director helped prepare the budget, said Wednesday.

The city expects to reconsider its budget after Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature decide what funding will be sliced or eliminated to help close a massive state budget gap. The state is considering reducing local governments’ share of gasoline taxes, trimming cities’ reimbursements for vehicle license fees and retaining redevelopment agency property-tax proceeds.

Preservationists’ efforts to declare Conejo Valley High School a historic landmark tabled $700,000 that city planners wanted to appropriate through 2005 to help pay for tearing down the 78-year-old building, razing several other structures on the 10-acre campus and removing gasoline storage tanks. The city’s goal is to prepare the site at Newbury and Kelly roads for commercial redevelopment.

A related joint project with the school district, which hopes to sell or lease the site and relocate the continuation school, would have budgeted $150,000 in each of the next two years for improvements at the property. The campus is just east of where the council recently approved construction of a Kohl’s department store. The pot of money is being reserved pending further discussion with the school district and preservationists.

“We’re going to look at the options and see if it’s worth preserving in any form,” said Gary Mortimer, the school district’s assistant superintendent for business services. “It may have a funky, Art Deco look, but functionally the building is about as inefficient as you can get.”

Regarding salary adjustments, Chris Meske, a shop steward for one of the four employee unions that bargain with the city, told the council that workers had only three business days to review a consultant’s survey of 475 full- and part-time workers. The report recommends that the city adjust salary ranges for a third of its approximately 500-person work force, but only some workers would receive immediate pay increases.

“The city wants to hire and employ the best workers but doesn’t want to pay them top dollar,” said Meske, a public works employee at Thousand Oaks’ municipal service center.

After discussing the fairness of adjusting pay before employees have more time to weigh in on the issue, council members voted to invite union leaders and any interested employees to contact them or appear at the next council meeting to voice concerns.

The council also raised rates Tuesday for municipal water and sewage service, builder fees that support law enforcement and the cost of Civic Arts Plaza parking during special events.

Many of Thousand Oaks’ user fees, last adjusted in 2001, were raised 15% to 20%. The amounts are designed to cover the cost of providing services, including personnel expenses, materials and overhead.

In addition, more than a dozen fees were raised but set below what is needed to pay for the service. For example, a resident appealing a Planning Commission decision will soon pay 40% more, or $700, but the city estimates the staff time needed to process an appeal costs $3,341. And getting a permit to make major modifications to backyard oak trees will mean paying 30% more, or $150, rather than the city’s $2,995 cost.

The water and sewer rate hikes will cost homeowners about $150 for two years.

The amount builders must pay to compensate for bringing more residents or visitors to town was increased nearly 7.4%. The new charges are $350 per home, $174 per apartment unit or 17 cents per square foot of nonresidential space constructed.