A few days before the San Luis Obispo City Council instituted a staff hiring freeze and stopped all staff training and travel to help close the city’s projected $1.5 million budget gap, City Manager Katie Lichtig told San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce members about the city's current and future fiscal challenges.

 

Lichtig spoke to 100 business people on Feb. 19 as part of the Chamber’s Legislative Council Lunch program, and touched on issues including budget cuts and impending negative impacts on public services.

 

“The reality is that the city is facing the same kinds of economic challenges that the business community is, that the state is, that the federal government is, that the county is,” Lichtig said at the luncheon. The Legislative Council Lunches are designed to inform the business community of new legislation and provide a bridge between the private sector and the public sector.

 

The city staff presented its mid-year budget to the City Council on Tuesday night, and asked for direction to develop a plan.
In the next 18 months, Lichtig said, the city must fill the $1.5 million budget gap. That is in addition to the $11.3 million in budget cuts that were made to begin this two-year fiscal period with a balanced budget and before the holiday sales tax numbers come from the state in April.

“We need to be creative, to think about things that we’ve never thought about before … and potentially re-engineer some of our business processes,” Lichtig said of the city staff. “That is likely to have some service impacts in terms of what we’re able to provide to the community, but one of the things that we’ve discussed as an executive team is being able to articulate what those service impacts are so that there are no surprises.”

Lichtig mentioned that the collaboration between both the private and public sectors in San Luis Obispo makes the city spectacular, but both sectors need to find a way to capitalize on the city’s natural beauty and sense of place.

“The city is known throughout the state, and throughout the country, as being exceptionally well-run, always focused on outcomes, the cost of doing business, efficiency and effectiveness,” Lichtig said.

“There are amazing institutions with long, historical views that are aligned in purpose to make San Luis Obispo great today and great tomorrow. That is an amazing resource of positive attitude that we need to tap into.”