Mayor Delivers Mid-Year "State of the City" Address Update and Installs Officers of Pacifica Democrats

"This past week was a really great week in Pacifica!", exclaimed Pacifica Mayor Mary Ann Nihart, as she began her "State of the City" update at the Pacifica Democrat's monthly breakfast meeting on Saturday morning, July 16th.

 

Members of the Pacifica Democrats, as well as members of the general public, had eagerly come to the Sharp Park Golf Course Restaurant's Banquet Room that morning to hear the Mayor deliver her mid-year update...And, in view of the recent failure of the fire assessment tax, and its subsequent economic ramifications on the City's budget, the lack of "doom and gloom" in the Mayor's opening remarks was both refreshing and heartily welcomed by the mid-morning diners.

 

The Mayor's initial statements described the highly successful hosting, earlier in the week, of the "McNavigators", a man and wife "Best of the Road" evaluation team from the Rand McNally Road Trip Contest, who had been traveling during the previous three weeks, from the East Coast to the West Coast, in search of the Most Beautiful Small Town in the United States. Pacifica, through an aggressive on-line voting push initiated by the Mayor, landed as one of the finalists in the nationwide competition, thus giving the various local organizations and businesses of Pacifica the challenging goal of quickly coming together, to work in concert with the Pacifica Chamber of Commerce, the City's Dept. of Public Works, and the State of California's Caltrans staff, in making both the town and its roadways as attractive as possible in the telescopic timeframe given to them...a challenge everyone energetically met and skillfully executed.

 

"The Rand McNally thing wasn't a city function or anything like that..Why did we do it? This was about advertising Pacifica," Nihart told the audience. ""When Rand McNally and USA Today initially began this contest, their goal was to have 50 million hits on their website. It was an advertising stunt. They wanted to advertise their maps, their on-line sites etc,. and work with us by taking pictures of Pacifica and its attractions. The week before the McNavigators arrived, the Rand McNally website had 250 million hits... There are now well over 350 million hits on its website and all of the other connected sites to its website. We are now all over the internet," exclaimed Nihart.

 

( The Rand McNally On the Road Best of the Road website currently features pictures of many of  Pacifica's various attractions including: the "wide open spaces" of San Pedro Valley County Park and Frontierland Park, Sam's Castle and its Resident Ghosts, the Segway Tours at Rockaway Beach, the already famous Gorilla BBQ, the historic Alister MacKenzie-designed Sharp Park Golf Course, the L-Shaped "Reverend Harkins" Pacifica Pier, the Grace McCarthy Vista Point, and some additional  "one of a kind" places such as the Pedro Point Boat Dock, Shelter Cove, and the home of Captain Dollar Radio ..Go to: http://ontheroad.bestoftheroad.com/category/best-of-the-road/mcnavigators/                                   ) 

 

 "This wasn't a city venture. This didn't have any budget. It had nothing, but donations and enthusiasm. The Chamber did the event. It also brought many of us together that have never worked together before. And this is why Pacifica is so wonderful...when we work together, we do outstanding things," Nihart said.

 

She thanked various members in the Pacifica Democrats audience for their participation in the week's events, including: Segway Tours for providing the Segway lessons and coastside touring, Directors of the Pacifica Historical Society for portraying the Resident Ghosts at Sam's Castle who told the "Tales of the Castle" to the Rand McNally team and Cindy Abbott, from the PBR Commission, for escorting the Rand McNally Team from place to place, and also in helping with the co-ordination of the overall operation.

 

The Mayor then advised that Pacifica is a finalist in yet another on-line contest called, "Bark for Your Park!", which has a grand prize of $100,000 from Pet Save. The contest is ongoing and the Mayor passed out flyers with instructions on how to participate, by voting on the internet, in order to secure the grand prize money for the City. "There are 15 finalists and, at present, we are number twelve out of the 15, so we have to vote a lot more in order to win," Nihart said."Vote every day and from every email address that you have and on Facebook too. Vote at: www.barkforyourpark.com .

   

With that said, the Mayor's message then developed a more serious tone...

 

"With $1.5 million being cut out of our budget, that meant reducing services," Nihart revealed. "Ultimately, it impacted 19 people, one way or the other, including layoffs. We found some places for all, but four of those folks. But, basically, it impacted people's jobs significantly," said Nihart. She advised that they had to eliminate the official City Attorney's position, but now have an interim attorney who works for, basically, a law firm that,ultimately,can provide all of the services that the City needs. And, hopefully, according to the Mayor, by not having to have additional attorneys to do court time, the City will save money.

 

"One of the things that the City has done that is the most controversial is that Pacifica's Police Dispatch is now run out of South San Francisco," the Mayor said."We are going to see more of these kinds of things throughout the County, as people struggle with these  issues of combining services." Nihart explained that such a move means that now when people go to the police station, with an emergency, at nights or on weekends, and pick up the phone, they will be talking to a dispatcher in South San Francisco, however, the police may be actually at the police station.

 

Nihart remarked that the City's new Police chief, James Tasa, was sworn in on July 13th and that the swearing in ceremony was widely attended, which she believes to be a sign of support from the City's various groups and it's citizenry.

 

Nihart then stated that the City is also contracting out: street cleaning, tree trimming and the City's street lights. The  Mayor pointed out, however, that the City is looking at a pilot program with P G and E concerning street lights in the future and has only done a temporary contract concerning the street lights, at present.

 

"We have also laid-off four additional positions in PBR,  on top of the four positions that got laid-off during the course of the year, or that we eliminated," Nihart said."The list goes on in other departments and it's significant. That's the bottom line."

 

In answer to the criticisms of the City Council's decisions and actions that are currently on the blogs in town, the Mayor stated that they didn't have the language in their current contracts to make a "10% emergency cut across the board", but that is changing so that when an emergency crisis occurs, there will be language in the contracts with some other things to do than what they are currently allowed to do..and there will be more tools available than what they have now in their contracts to grapple with emergency situations. "This issue is a significant piece of the contract negotiations that we are now having with employee groups," Nihart said.

 

"But, when people come up to me and congratulate me on having a balanced budget, it makes me nervous, because we are still deficit spending... Despite all of the cuts, we had to take another $650,000 out of reserves," the Mayor revealed. "We're down about 2 and 1/2% in our property taxes, which is not bad, compared to other cities, not bad at all. Might things change over the course of a year? Might we do better over the course of the year? Might we do better with our TOT? Yes, things can change, but if everything goes as predicted, at the end of this year we will be under $1,000,000 in reserves...just shy of it, but under it ,and that's where we're at, as a City, that's what we have," said Nihart.

 

The Mayor then spoke about what's happening concerning Redevelopment and some of the changes that have occurred in the budget from the State. She pointed out that the "good news" concerning the Redevelopment issue in Pacifica is that it doesn't have a lot there and because of that, Pacifica's increment wasn't huge, and so, what the State is asking back from Pacifica, in its share of the $1.7 billion that the State needs, is only about $35,000. To stay in and continue Redevelopment, it will cost Pacifica about $35,000 and that,compared to some other places, is fairly small.

 

Nihart then delivered the "bad news", stating that what Pacifica has collected from the TOT this past year and the previous year has not been enough to support the debt service, and that, in order to continue, a little bit has been taken from the General Fund to keep the RDA going. That becomes an ongoing problem, according to the Mayor. Nihart wants to think aggressively about how to change that, but is waiting for the facts and figures to be on the table so that they can make the right decision. The deadline for deciding on whether Pacifica stays in or gets out is August 26th this year. "If we get out, we assume the debt," Nihart stated."So I'm thinking, what are we going to do here? We have a lot to work on."

 

"If I think about it, it seems grim. But, I don't know...It's just what is, it's just what is," said Nihart." I have to remind folks that we can all point fingers, we can all point that this happen because of X, Y and Z, and we shoulda, coulda, woulda, but, I honestly can't go there right now, because I want us to survive and that's why I'm looking at everything," Nihart stated. "We start next month again with the "Financing City Services Committee. We are expanding some members. If you are interested, please get your application in very, very quickly. If you are interested at all, attend the meetings. There is no mystery in Finance here, except for the fact that there are funds that get dedicated," Nihart advised."For example, Measure A funds go for highways and street improvements and we can't use it to pay for salaries somewhere else...When you have certain fees like developer fees, they have to go for recreation and parks, because that's what they are. We can't just move it around. Dedicated Funds can't be interchanged with the General Fund Budget"

 

Nihart revealed that 55% of the General Fund Budget is paid to police and fire and everything else that goes for city works from day to day comes out of the General Fund. She stated that the City only makes money in a few ways. There are fees that can be charged for services and permits and sometimes there's money from property rentals or sales. If Pacifica gets more people in town to purchase things, then it gets more money from sales tax. If it gets more people in town to stay at its hotels, it gets more TOT money. And, of course, it still gets a large portion of it's money from property taxes.

 

As far as current improvements in town, the Mayor reported that the Pedro Point Shopping Center recently had a "shot in the arm" from the opening of the Fresh and Easy store earlier this year and that the recent improvements made to the other business store fronts in that same center were also good for business overall. She reported that there currently are some plans for improvement in the works up in the Pacific Manor Shopping Center and that they got a "shot in the arm" with the new bus stop and the new trash cans, and that she would also like to see the Eureka Square Shopping Center get its own "shot in the arm" as well.

 

The "Beach Blvd" property, formerly known as the old sewer treatment plant, where the City Council still conducts its meetings, will be having a RFQ to look for a developer for the design that Nihart, personally, thinks is workable: a hotel, some residential that creates a transition, and breaking it up into three pieces. Nihart said that the City Council is now looking more at selling than leasing the property, at this point.

 

The next "shot in the arm", according to Nihart, is for the Palmetto district. The new street lights for Palmetto have been sitting in a warehouse awaiting the undergrounding of the wiring by P G and E, which has pushed back the installation schedule each year, from its orignal installation date of 2008. Now it is scheduled to happen in 2012. Nihart reported that there is some capital set aside from the old wastewater treatment plant that can actually be used for improving Palmetto and revitalizing that neighborhood.

 

In reference to the issue of paid parking at the Linda Mar Beach, Nihart reported that the Coastal Commission has finally deemed Pacifica's application as complete. The Coastal Commission has 180 days to respond. 

 

The Mayor asked for all of the citizens to work with the City Council, the City and with each other, in order to achieve a truly successful financial outcome for Pacifica in the future.

 

INSTALLATION OF OFFICERS: At the end of her presentation, Mayor Nihart officially installed the Officers of the Pacifica Democrats Executive Board for the 2011-2012 term:  President - Barbara Arietta; Vice-President- Jack Waldbewohner;         Treasurer - Suzan Getchell-Wallace; Secretary - Mari Brumm Merrill.

Barbara Arietta

President - Pacifica Democrats
415-246-0775