More Spending For Less
As we approach tax season here are some results from a recent unscientific exploration of city budgets. Those budgets fill hundreds of pages with all kinds of charts, graphs and pictures of VIPs. The bottom line can be hard to find.
In 1973 Laguna Beach’s annual city budget, adjusted for inflation, was around $34.5 million. Our population was about 14,900. That equaled $2,400 a year in city government spending for every man, woman and child in town.
Today’s annual city budget is $92.4 million. With our population around 23,200, that’s almost $4,000 a year per capita. This is a 65% increase in spending.
Now, $4,000 each seems like a lot of money for city government. The money we spend on schools, county, state and federal governments isn’t counted here.
In San Clemente the tab is about $1,750 per capita. That is less than half of what we spend.
Dana Point spends about $1,300 each, which doesn’t include sewer fees. They just completed a big downtown make over. Perhaps for less money than we spent on studies and plans for the Village Exit.
Newport Beach spends about $3,000 each. They have a big harbor plus their own library system to support.
The recently adopted federal budget works out to $4,000 per capita. Our current city spending is now on par with the feds.
It’s hard to see the benefits from all this increased spending. Are we better served by a city hall that is closed every other Friday? Do our beaches, parks and public spaces seem cleaner or more picturesque? For that kind of money we should expect Laguna to sparkle like a star.
The Main Beach homeless breakfast club, filthy sidewalks and all the empty street tree basins, where we cut down trees and just fill the hole, don’t help.
No worries about the real cost to bring our polluting sewers and storm drains up to first world standards. That’s not covered by this 65% increased spending.
We just spent $5 million on grants to community organizations. Do we really like those grant recipients so much that every one of us should give them $215 this year? This is starting to look like gifts of public funds for vote buying.
Newport Beach’s spending for discretionary grants to community organizations was a little over $21,000 – total. That cost every man, woman and child in Newport Beach 24 cents.
Council member Steve Dicterow recently surmised that voters might be in an angry mood this November. He could be onto something as we continue down this path of profligate spending.
JJ Gasparotti moved to Laguna Beach with his family when he was 11yrs old. He has loved it ever since.
