Budget cutback strategies approved by the Pacific Grove City Council this week are expected to save the city $2.8 million during the coming fiscal year.
The cutbacks include:
· $410,000 from the police budget by eliminating unfilled positions, including one sergeant, three police officers and a police services technician;
· $182,000 from the firefighting budget by eliminating three firefighter positions and full- and part-time office assistant positions, and reducing the part-time firefighter program;
· $296,000 from the administration budget, down 15 percent from the current budget;
· $410,000 from the public works budget, down 20 percent;
· $473,000 from the library, down 50 percent;
· $325,000 from recreation, down 34 percent; and
· $148,000 from the museum, down 52 percent.
Category Archives: Pacific Grove
Parolee Busted For Burglary In P.G.
Nyunt just told everyone we don’t lock our doors. Great.
They learned he was Jorge Gonzalez, a Seaside parolee whose prior convictions include burglary, possession of stolen property and resisting arrest.
Nyunt reported Gonzalez’s car contained numerous items that appeared to have been stolen, including cell phones, a GPS unit and a compressor. “We’re still trying to identify the victims,” he said. Gonzalez also allegedly possessed burglary tools, and Nyunt said he had been rummaging through boxes stored in the carport when the officer first spotted him.
“Individuals know that communities such as Pacific Grove and Carmel are considered a safe haven, and people don’t lock their doors,” Nyunt said, adding that residents persist in believing, “This is not going to happen here.”
More Idiots In Country Club Gate
Remember the doofus that said he was kidnapped when he couldn’t score a drug deal? Same shopping center.
Initially, the man stated he was simply eating when a male juvenile confronted him, punched him in the face and then chased him around the restaurant with a stun gun before running outside and jumping into a white car with North Carolina plates.
“Apparently they were throwing chairs at each other also, so we may end up charging everyone with a crime,” he said, adding that the license plate number, as well as some other witnesses, yielded useful information.”We have identified all the players,” he said.
School Administrators Get $1,700,000 Offices, Students Get None
Money to pay for the projects will come from Measure D, a $42 million bond passed in 2006 to pay for repairs and renovations of classrooms, schools and other education facilities.
Next time someone asks you to give and give for the schools, remember the $1.7 million dollars the school kids will never use.
There’s no mention of the fate of the old buildings that are unfit for administrators – will our kids end up attending classes in them?
Sixty years after the Pacific Grove Unified School District administration moved into military barracks at Fountain and Sinex avenues, the buildings are on their way to retirement.
Board members voted last week to build a new district office at the former community high school site, located near a field used by Pacific Grove Middle School.
The new building will be about 7,000 square feet, or about 1,000 square feet more than at the district office’s current location. Cost of the new district headquarters is estimated at $1.7 million.
School Administrators Get $1,700,000 Offices, Students Get None
The Pensions That Pain Us
So, it must be true, that the former city councils are the ones that made bad decisions.
Pacific Grove is looking at a $2.3 million-a-year money pit in retirement liability that increases every year while city revenues remain relatively static.
When the bubble burst at the end of the decade and the stock market plunged following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, income in the system fund dipped while pension benefit costs continued to climb.
“The primary reason we have the current crisis,” mathematician and City Councilman Daniel Davis said in a report he submitted to other city officials in August, “is the city employee pension fund.”
The City Council approved an increase in benefits under CalPERS in the late 1990s at a time when it appeared the added cost to the city was negligible, Davis said, but from 2000-02, “the CalPERS return on investment in the retirement fund was negative.
Picture – Rocky Shores 1980
Found in the basement. Remember when the house had the huge antennas?
Here’s today’s view:
Moth Spraying Returns In June
Guess the moth lovers lost that one.
The state’s agriculture department announced Wednesday it plans to resume aerial spraying of pheromones over the Central Coast on June 1.
In a new 2008 “action plan” for fighting the light brown apple moth in California, the state also said it would likely release a stingless wasp in parts of Carmel, Marina and Seaside in hopes of controlling the moth, which officials say presents a threat to agriculture and the environment.
Motels Against Public Safety
Pacific Grove’s innkeepers are crying foul over a signature-gathering campaign by the Pacific Grove Police Officers Association to put an increase in the city’s transient occupancy tax — or room tax — on the ballot.
The city supported an economic advisory committee with an annual $107,000 contribution to the Chamber of Commerce for various city activities and events. With the formation of the Hospitality Improvement District, the city now uses that money to pay part of the Convention and Visitor Bureau dues.
Pacific Grove entered a contract to pay the Convention and Visitors Bureau through 2012, said Chamber of Commerce president Moe Ammar. He and innkeepers met with police association members Monday and emerged with “an understanding that they will consider our request not to pursue a room tax.”
There’s Moammar In The Middle again.
Who Runs Pacific Grove? Part II
The city leaders or the labor unions? Looking for day to day representation or benefits and unions are slow to respond. But threaten them with loss of dues and they bump the performance up to “meets expectations”.
Laborers Local 270 in Santa Cruz filed the complaint after the City Council’s adoption on Oct. 3 of a city reorganization plan developed by City Manager Jim Colangelo.
The charges contend that Colangelo’s plan deleted 21 full-time and two part-time employee positions while adding 23 lower-paying full-time and two half-time positions.
The changes were made without prior notice to the union or offering an opportunity for union members to meet and confer with management over the changes. A settlement conference has been set Feb. 26 in Oakland.
P.G. Outdoor Supply Takes A Hike
Seemed that it could have made it with longer hours. Was only open from 11:00 to 4:00. Even with those short hours they never took down the “open” signs.
