Limiting Spending

By Ryan Huckabone

Treat San Diego government's budget like we treat our own budgets. Implement the Managed Competition program.

According to its proposed budget, the City of San Diego is expected to receive over $1 billion in revenue in 2010. This amount is "projected". The actual amount is not known until taxes and other City fees are collected throughout the year. If you read the City's budget, every dime of "projected" revenue is budgeted to a specific program or department. By "earmarking" every dime, the City must reallocate funds in order to pay for any unforeseen expense during the year.

Just as the couple above had to reallocate their "trip funds" for a higher priority issue, I would like to see the City reallocate funds currently going to non-essential city functions into higher priority programs, such as water recycling and reservoir augmentation.

Throughout the year, the City's budget office will update the City's projected revenues for the year. Sometimes, they report a drop in projected revenue which means the City has budgeted for more money than it will receive. If elected to the city council, I will endorse a policy that requires the City to cut the budgets of all departments and programs by the same percentage as what is "updated" by the budget office. Therefore, if the budget office declares a 2% drop in projected revenue for the City, every department and program budget will be reduced by 2% immediately.

We, as private residents, do not have the luxury of spending more than we make without dire consequences. The City should be held to the same standard.

One major step towards reducing our city's spending is to implement the Managed Competition program which would allow private sector businesses to compete for certain city contracts. This "competition" would drive costs down, thus saving San Diego potentially millions of dollars every year.