We have previously opined on the City of La Habra’s regrettable descent into perilous fiscal straits. Given city’s numerous legal problems, coupled with the scheduled sunsetting of the city’s sales tax in 2028, one might assume the La Habra City Council would be cautious about their budget with eye to conserving tax dollars.
If you thought that, you would be wrong.
Instead, the city’s elected leaders have engaged in a troubling, if familiar, pattern of self-inflicted wounds in order to appease the city employee bargaining units.
The bonanza started on June 19th, 2023 when the City Council gave out pay raises to the General Service bargaining group, the Municipal Employees bargaining group, and the non-represented management. Between 2023-24 through Fiscal Year 2025-26, the salary increases will cost $2,292,169.
Next up was the police association, who got their contract approved on August 7th, 2023. This contract takes them through Fiscal Year 2024-25, with pay raises that will cost just over $2 million.
And finally on August 21st, 2023 the City Council agreed to a 10 year contract with Los Angeles County Fire to provide fire service. The new contract will take the cost of fire services from $11.2 million a year to $14.3 million a year, a staggering increase that will now be built into every city budget for the next 10 years. When discussing the fire contract, Councilman Steve Simonian experienced a moment of remarkable candor when he said this contract was “not sustainable” . Moments later the City Council unanimously approved it 5-0 anyway.
READ: La Habra Councilman Steve Simonian Resigns
Taken together, compensation to city employees will be going up about $7.5 million per year. In a booming economy La Habra would be lucky to have revenues grow by half that amount. How could the City Council be so reckless, even occasionally acknowledging out loud this is “not sustainable”? One clue may be found in campaign donations.
The three incumbents who won re-election to City Council in 2022 were Daren Nigsarian, Jose Medrano, and James Gomez. It should come as no surprise that their campaigns were largely funded by public employee unions. Nigsarian, Medrano, and Gomez each received a maximum campaign donation of $4,900 from both the firefighters union and the police union. While we don’t hold with the simplistic notion that campaign donations are determinative of how elected officials will votes, it is more often the case that special interest contributions flow toward like-minded candidates – and in this case, towards electeds who were pre-disposed toward – or at least found it easier to – elevating the particular interests of the city’s bargaining units above the general interests of city taxpayers.
Having spent 2023 emptying out the city treasury to the benefit of their campaign donors, the City Council is now closing their meetings with a power point slide that reads “The City would like to hear more from the public as we consider a 2024 budget where funding cuts are anticipated.” City residents are invited to participate in an online survey where they can voice their opinions prior to cuts happening.
A resident will be asked if 9-1-1 service is important, repairing storm drains, fixing potholes, protecting groundwater supplies, removing hazardous waste, protecting parks, responding to earthquakes, etc. In other words, all the things everyone expects from their government. How could you cut that?! Naturally their survey omits details of their 2023 deals.
The La Habra City Council’s plan to get out of this mess were laid bare by Councilman Steve Simonian in his moment of honesty when he said the quiet part out loud: they plan on raising sales taxes. The only questions remaining are: when are they trying to raise taxes, and by how much?
Councilman Simonian recently announced he is resigning from the City Council to spend more time with his family. Maybe he also doesn’t want to stick around to grapple with the harsh consequences of his recent votes.
