Benicia Budget Builder

Introduction

Each year, the City of Benicia conducts an exhaustive process to examine its budget, including current and long-term revenues and expenditures. City officials also continually monitor financial conditions throughout the year and take necessary action to ensure fiscal stability. While the current year’s revenues are higher than anticipated, the year will end with expenses exceeding revenues. The City is facing a fundamental imbalance between revenues and expenditures...this has been going on for decades. It is time for the City to correct this situation and adopt a truly balanced budget.

Benicia is a full-service city, providing many services such as water, wastewater, fire, police, parks, library, and more. Although the services the City provides are valued, they are expensive.

Budget Builder Exercise

The purpose of the Budget Builder is to help residents understand the challenges the City faces in providing all current services with too few dollars. Although revenue continues to increase, it is not keeping up with the pace of costs.

The value of this exercise is for our residents to understand the difficult choices our City Council must make. This exercise is not a survey to make recommendations for cuts, rather it is an informational engagement tool for our residents.

Note: This exercise does not reflect actual dollar amounts nor does it reflect an accurate representation of proposed reductions. To learn more about Benicia's budget, visit www.ci.benicia.ca.us/BudgetChallenge.

Background