These key Sacramento police, parks programs could be cut to fix city's budget deficit
SACRAMENTO — We are getting a closer look at the budget cuts that could be on the table to fix Sacramento's $66 million budget deficit.
The city has published a list of 120 programs that could be cut. Mayor Darrell Steinberg is calling the list of programs "a dose of reality."
Matt King is a Sacramento community advocate who has sat in on city budget town halls. He read from the list that includes some high-profile police department programs.
"The sexual assault felony enforcement team," King said, "they want to make cuts there.
"Reduction of gang investigations, and it just, it goes on."
Among the police department's proposed cuts is reducing funding to the Office of Violence Prevention, eliminating human trafficking investigations, eliminating problem-oriented policing, and even eliminating the SWAT Team.
They are only proposals for now, but even the suggestion is stunning to King.
"The Problem-Oriented Policing team, which they're the ones that go around, they do initial reach outs to homeless camps, they deal with the drug houses, the marijuana grow houses," King said.
Each city department was asked to propose 15% cuts to funding. Besides police, the parks department is proposing reductions of pool hours just before the scoring summer hits.
Jennifer Holden is the president of the Mangan Park Neighborhood Association.
"This operates as a de facto cooling center," Holden said about the Mangan Park public pool. "It's easy to say, 'Oh, let's cut pools. They're luxuries,' and no, pools are not luxuries. In this part of Sacramento, these are sometimes essential to maintaining life."
These would be big changes to Sacramento city services as the city's looming deficit turns from paper to reality, impacting real people.
"If we want to be the inviting Sacramento that we keep trying to project to everyone else, to bring in revenue, we have to also look like it," King said.
The city manager will next decide what mix of cuts to include in the proposed budget. He has said he will try to avoid layoffs.
The new proposed budget will be released by the end of this month. Ultimately, the full city council will vote on the final budget before July 1.
