VIDEO: Imperial Beach City Finances Explained Ahead of 2011-13 Budget

At a Feb. 9 workshop at the Imperial Beach Civic Center, City Council, staff and department directors met to redefine the city's goals for the next five years and to talk about .

Amendments will be made to previous years' list of goals and presented to the City Council for approval at a future meeting.

The workshop started with Director Michael McGrane briefly defining the city's current budget and challenges for a new 2011-13 budget which must be approved by the council before going into effect July 1.

The city's total general fund for the current fiscal year is $16.8 million.

That money pays for the majority of services the city provides. Public safety takes up 75 percent of the net general fund. The Sheriff's Department contract is the largest single expense at $5.5 million.

Sheriff's contract costs are expected to rise by $225,000 to $250,000 a year for the next few years.

An external audit that will soon be presented to the City Council is expected to show a balanced budget, McGrane said.

"We want to be balanced. We don't want to be out of balance."

In the past, the city could absorb increases by waiting to fill a vacant position, he said, but "current revenues and expenditures are exactly matched."

That was OK last year, McGrane said, "but when we start doing the budget it's going to be hard to keep a balance when there are these cost increases. And those cost increases are likely the sheriff's costs."

said he wants to reduce crime in Imperial Beach over the course of the next year by 10 percent.

"That all plays into what your goals are. That's what I want to do," Myers said. "You tell me what the bottom line is then I have to try and figure out realistically if we can achieve that and if we can."

Director and Fire Chief Tom Clark also cautioned the city.

"If there's conscious decisions to cut, you know you're going to be cutting a response time for how fast a fire engine or an EMS unit or a law enforcement officer is going to show up at your incident. And it could be simply to take a report or it could be somebody having a heart attack."

Gov. Jerry Brown is advocating the elimination of redevelopment agencies as part of efforts to reduce a $25 billion state budget shortfall. That could have an especially big impact on Imperial Beach, McGrane said, since the city is in the first phases of redevelopment.

"The first bond issue primarily went to public improvements like streets," McGrane said. "So when you look at Palm Avenue, Old Palm Avenue, Seacoast Drive, crosswalks there are much better now and better than the region typically. Veterans Park was updated. Portions of the soccer field [at the Boys & Girls Club] and skate park were paid for.

"So all the amenities that make this city livable were helped along with redevelopment," he said.

After infrastructure improvements, the Imperial Beach Redevelopment Agency is investing in large projects it hopes will be catalysts to private investment such as rebuilding the Miracle Shopping Center on Ninth Street and Palm Avenue, a and a new hotel .

Depending on if or how redevelopment agencies are eliminated by the state of California, the city of Imperial Beach expects to lose between $200,000 to $650,000 a year in property tax.

"That's a big, big number," McCrane said. "Two hundred thousand dollars is a big number [and] 650K is an incredibly large number."

Other large potential impacts to general funds in the near future include a possible decrease in the city's share of pass through property tax revenue that could cost about $100,000 and an increase in pension retirement costs that could cost the city another $100,000.

On the plus side, assessed property value rose 8 percent since a previous evaluation and so the pass through and increased value may cancel each other out, McGrane said.