"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
From Silicon Valley Mercury News/Karen de Sa, 7/29/11. "California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom arrives in San Jose Friday to
unveil his plan to hoist the state out of its economic abyss --
borrowing on the successes of Silicon Valley's global reach and
the need to restore long-absent state leadership in job creation.
The plan aims to expand exports, green industry and new
manufacturing in a state with a foreclosure-riddled housing
market and the nation's second-highest jobless rate. It comes
after several months in which the Democratic second-in-command
searched for effective economic-development strategies in dozens
of countries, from Singapore to Germany. Newsom also traveled to
six other states, even making a trip to Texas with 14 Republicans.
