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presented for approval tonight as the baseline. He said staff will be updating it every 2 years <br />and will present a 10-year future look, or a long-term picture. <br />Councilmember Sullivan questioned the golf course revenue being brought in annually, and <br />Dave Iremonger reported staff had originally projected about 58,000 rounds for the first half and <br />full year, which was amended to 68,000 rounds and now it looks like they were projecting <br />72,000 to 73,000 rounds ending June 30th. Originally they had approximately $300,000 of <br />projected net income which was increased to $700,000 and it looks now they will be over <br />$900,000 in net income for this year. All expenses have been covered for operating the golf <br />course, debt service is paid at $1.6 million for construction of the course, and the $900,000 was <br />well above where they projected to pay this year's contribution to debt service. <br />Councilmember Thorne questioned if staff used zero based budgeting or used historical actuals <br />as a base. Mr. Culver said they use historical actuals as a base line budget, look at increment <br />being requested above that, identify unavoidable increases versus what would be nice to have, <br />and generally they maintain status quo services they are offering now, unless it is an <br />enhancement, which is brought to the Council. Councilmember Thorne questioned why then <br />was the City always over budget, as he was having difficulty in using this concept of using <br />budgets and expense reports as a management tool and said there is always an unstated <br />number. Mr. Culver said on the revenue side, it was difficult to predict due to estimates, triple flip <br />numbers, and some employee vacancy savings. <br />Councilmember Thorne felt if staff intends to have money left over at the end of the year, he <br />suggested there be a special line item for contingencies that accounts for the under spending at <br />the end of the year. <br />Councilmember Cook-Kallio referred to the state being able to come in twice in 10 years and <br />take a loan, asked if they had done this in Pleasanton, asked whether they did this in solvent <br />cities and felt it was almost a penalty for being good at what the city does. Mr. Fialho said two <br />years ago the State passed Proposition 1 A that limits the amount of times the State can borrow <br />from local jurisdictions to balance their budget. They can only do that two times every ten years. <br />He said the last time he saw the numbers, since 1992 which was where he saw the state <br />balance its budget on the backs of counties and cities, the City of Pleasanton has lost <br />approximately $50 million to the state. This money has been taken out of Pleasanton's sales <br />and property taxes annually to balance its budget, and Mayor Hosterman noted the State must <br />pay it off within three years before they can take a second loan. <br />Councilmember Sullivan said what concerns him is the state still has a deficit and they are still <br />using the same gimmicks to balance the budget in years past. Mr. Fialho said Councilmember <br />Thorne's comments have been heard, they have not been discounted, the difficulty the City has <br />is that they must rely on many of the revenue projections from other agencies and sometimes <br />they are low and it is revised. Property tax payments occur twice annually whereas sales tax <br />comes in four times annually. TOT was largely dependent on the economy which was also hard <br />to predict. However, he would rather be in the current position than the opposite. <br />Councilmember Thorne asked if any federal earmark monies were received from Washington <br />for three projects, and City Manager Fialho said these were not accounted for, requests were <br />still in, they asked for those grant sources last year but the federal earmark process was put on <br />hold or "imploded° and Councilmember Cook-Kallio was going to Washington next week on a <br />separate trip and she was hoping to be doing some official City business on where we are in the <br />process. <br />City Council Minutes 10 June 19, 2007 <br />