CARLSBAD: Council to vote on city's budget Tuesday

Softball players steamed about proposed fee increase

By BARBARA HENRY - Staff Writer | Sunday, June 22, 2008 4:11 PM PDT ∞

CARLSBAD ---- Senior softball players, land preservation groups and others are expected to make their final funding pitches Tuesday when Carlsbad's City Council adopts its budget for the coming fiscal year.

"We will have a presence," said Gary Duerst, a member of the North County Senior Softball league, as he discussed the group's plans Friday afternoon.

The softball players want the council to continue an arrangement they've had for years that allows them to play on city fields for $5 a game. City staff members say the deal was never in a written contract and the group should be paying $15 an hour.

That hourly rate is scheduled to increase by $10 under a proposal the council will consider as part of the city's budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The softball players say the change will cost them $11,000 a year, and that's far too much for senior citizens on fixed incomes to afford.

They're not the only ones making plans to attend Tuesday's 6 p.m. meeting at City Hall, 1200 Carlsbad Village Drive. People who want the city to move faster with plans to purchase wildlife habitat also say they intend to be there.

On its Web site, the conservation group Preserve Calavera is urging people to tell the City Council that "it is time to put some funds into preserving open space while there is still something left to preserve and the market turndown has lowered prices."

But city officials have said recently that they don't expect to be in much of a spend-happy mood.

Carlsbad's finance department is forecasting that the city's general fund ---- the main budget fund that pays everything from firefighter salaries to public works expenses ---- will collect $120.7 million in revenue in the fiscal year that begins July 1. That's only a slight increase from the $120.2 million the city expects to collect this year, and substantially less than the $124.5 million the city received in 2006-07.

Expenses in the coming year are forecast to be $118.3 million, up from the current year's figure of $116.5 million and the 2006-07 figure of $108.6 million.

The budget calls for adding several employees, but this slight increase in staffing is mostly related to the opening in August of a library learning center complex and seven tennis courts, city finance department employees say. Those new staff spots would be a full-time custodian, a part-time maintenance worker and a part-time computer technician. There's one other new position in the budget ---- a temporary internship would become a full-time position in the city manager's office.

Notoriously tight-fisted Carlsbad has long collected more revenue than it spends each year, and it has millions of dollars stashed in its reserve accounts. This year, the city's department heads were asked to research each expenditure and money-generating item in their budgets because of concerns about the national economic picture and the state's forecasted budget deficit, city Finance Director Lisa Irvine has said.

That's how the $5-a-game softball issue was discovered.

For city budget documents and other items related to the meeting, visit the city's Web site at www.carlsbadca.gov/chall/4councilmtg.html.

Contact staff writer Barbara Henry at (760) 901-4072.