The Culver City Council passed the budget for the Fiscal Year 2024-2025 at the council meeting on Monday, June 10, 2024. It was the culmination of months of meetings and departmental presentations, and highlights some of the ongoing challenges within the city’s needs and wants.
At the previous meeting finalizing the proposed budget, on May 21, 2024 the end of a two day marathon of departmental reports, numbers, projections and values. Mayor Yasmine Imani McMorrin praised the City’s Chief Financial Officer Lisa Soghor “Every year, you create a book … you produce a textbook for the City of Culver City…” Holding the printed text showed the heft of the volume, which included reports from every department in the city on their annual list of projects and requests. While the work was agreed to be thorough, the Mayor abstained on a vote to offer her objection to the way that some funding was being used.
For the General Fund, total revenue is projected at $170,184,808, and expenditures are $188,231, 307. The total municipal budget, including the General Fund, is projected as $330,914,032, and total expenditures come in at $382,273,472.
From the city statement, “Accounting for all adopted revenues and expenditures, the estimated ending General Fund balance is $118.6 million which is approximately $1.0 million more than what was projected in the first version of the proposed budget. Staff identified 22 Capital Improvement Projects that were successfully completed under-budget in prior fiscal years resulting in a total of $1.86 million in unspent funds that can be released back to the General Fund reserve.”
Both police and fire departments will see an increase in budget, with the Police Department receiving an additional $2.14 million, and the Fire Department getting a boost of $2.39 million. Parks, Recreation and Human Services will see a slight increase of $87. 5 thousand.
Departments that will see a decrease in funding include Public Works, which will be getting $354,000 less this fiscal year, Planning and Development, will be down by $2.78 million, and and Housing and Human Services, which will be getting $2.02 million less than the previous year under the current plan.
Holding to the state requirement of an Annual Appropriations Limit, the city will be $31,000,000 under the limit. The appropriations are set at $144, 399, 712, and will come in at 113, 355,558.
That the city will be needing to create more income in future, with projections for decrease revenues from current sources, led to the consideration of hiring on a lobbyist to work with both the county and the state.
Judith Martin-Straw
