Councilmembers engaged in some painstaking line-by-line cuts to the budget during a special meeting held Monday with one member noting: “Our citizens are going to fill these cuts and it’s unfortunate.”

The council wrestled with where to make cuts to prevent the city from dipping into reserves by $2.16 million. During its May 11 budget session, the council asked interim City Manager Steve Williams and Finance Director Vanessa Portillo to present three budget options that included Option A, filling the $2.16 million gap with reserves; Option B, making $1.16 million in cuts and use $1 million of reserves to cover the shortfall; or Option C whereby services are deeply cut to balance the budget. On Monday, the cuts were made to “right size revenues and expenditures,” in the words of Portillo.

At the outset, Portillo outlined how Williams found nearly $570,000 in spending cuts in areas like consulting contracts, training, travel, materials and supplies, along with about $270,000 in other cuts to drop the projected general fund deficit to approximately $1.588 million.

To pare down those amounts Williams recommended further cuts but first noted that the city’s contribution to the Stanislaus Animal Service Agency was $147,000 less than projected which he called a “good sign.”

He also said the city expects $70,000 more in revenue from the Modesto-Ceres Fire Protection District.

Williams recommended not skipping for one year the payment of $304,000 for the four recently acquired pieces of fire apparatus. The loan was made from an internal city fund.

Another $21,000 was cut from the budget by dropping upkeep for the Daniel Whitmore Home and $22,000 for maintenance on the Clinton Whitmore Mansion for a year. He also suggested dropping the $75,000 of General Fund monies toward Community Center expenses.

“This action in itself would not impact the community service, the Community Center, or the services that it provides,” said Williams. “It’s just suspending the fund transfer, not the programs.”

He also factored in a five percent vacancy rate in dispatchers to save $86,936 in salaries and benefits.

After July 1, Williams said, the city expects to receive $200,000 in revenues from Kase Manufacturing, a cannabis business in Ceres.

Added up, Williams’ budget cuts pared down a $1.5 million deficit to $619,000. He recommended that as Option B.

But the council went on to slash more spending to achieve Option C. Williams cautioned: “There are consequences to these cuts. We want to have a balanced budget, and with that, it’s gonna come some services that we’ve become accustomed to that will either need to shift to other staffing potentially resulting in a delay, or not providing those services at all.”

The council spared cutting three police officer cadet positions and their cadet tuition training at $223,000 each. Mayor Javier Lopez spoke for the rest of the council in saying he didn’t want cuts to police.

Williams recommended against an idea of the mayor to cancel Information Technology (IT) contract services to save $400,000 and provide the service in-house. Too much rides on a smooth IT, said Williams, especially for police and dispatchers, to justify the move.

But the council decided to cut:

• Donations to civic organizations saving $25,000;
• The $64,000 contract with Alpine Security to provide security at parks and lock park restrooms in the evening;
• The $266,000 contract with Bright View, the agency that provides right of way maintenance. Williams said the result will be that “the weeds will get longer, there may be trash in certain areas that would otherwise be picked up, or we assign existing staff to put it on their increasingly large list of things to do, and we will get to those items as quickly as they can.” Public groups and individuals could step up and adopt areas to clean.
• $8,000 in supplies for the annual Trunk Or Treat Festival;
• $8,000 in costs to underwrite the annual Christmas Festival. Williams noted the events won’t end but city support for supplies will with a need for the community to step up;
• The contract with Capital Advocacy to save $72,000. The group writes grants and tries to secure funding for Ceres.
• Hours of some of the part-time recreation employees to save $50,000. There are approximately 10 on staff. Williams said that some programs that may be impacted by this reduction including Kids in the Kitchen, some crafts, dance, youth programs and that some of the hours that the building is available may be reduced.
• The full-time recreation coordinator that costs the city $91,575. The position engages in senior programming and Community Center rentals.

“Senior programming may be impacted with the elimination of this position, as well as rentals,” said Williams. “However, staff believes that these duties can be assigned to other existing staff, without significant delay in those services, we believe we can continue providing senior programming, and we can continue seamlessly renting the facility with the elimination of this position.” However, the Community Center hours will likely be reduced

• Eliminating two part-time code enforcement officers assigned to the street division but who were hired knowing their jobs could end when ARPA dollars dried up. Keeping them would cost $33,000. Those employees help with cleaning up illegal dumps, graffiti abatement, shopping cart collection and other cleanups. Councilwoman Cerina Otero suggested having the council cut its budget costs as well as end medical premiums for members to keep the code enforcement positions. But the council suggested the positions could return if funding is found else or if further cuts can be made.
• Cutting a park’s maintenance worker to save $60,000.

“There is a consequence of that as well. The parks division would need to establish a priority based maintenance schedule for parks, landscaping and upkeep. The division currently maintains 14 parks with seven staff members. Sending staffing to six employees would likely result in the inability to fully maintain approximately two city parks and that may be on a month to month basis, it may be a week basis. It would be a rotating situation where the staff remaining could not service all the parks.”

By the end of the cuts, the city is projected to end the 2026-27 Fiscal Year with a balance of $8,580. It is expected to be adopted on June 8.

Ceres resident John Warren said the city has fallen on hard times “and we have no option but to have a balanced budget.” He said Williams did an “excellent job in providing you some options here.”

Otero said that while a balanced budget is a good thing noted that, “Our citizens are going to fill these cuts and it’s unfortunate.”

“These are hard decisions that had to be made. And it’s unfortunate that over, I don’t know how many years, the city probably hasn’t made very many hard decisions but here we are today, and what I expect is that going forward we start creating a plan of how we’re going to get out of this.”