Why did the Sacramento City Council take a long vacation with budget talks looming? | Opinion
It feels like the favorite pastime of the Sacramento City Council and some city staff is complaining about how much work they have to do, and how little time they have to do it.
Just a few weeks ago in mid-March, some people were asking why the city would take up the issue of a ceasefire resolution condemning the Israel-Hamas war when there are more pressing matters at home. A fair critique, considering how we see council agendas often filled with dozens of action items. City Manager Howard Chan often likes to remind the council that we are in a deficit year, and city budgeting can take careful politicking.
Opinion
So why then — especially with the fiscal year coming to an end soon — has the city not met in three weeks?
One reason may be the annual bacchanal known as Cap-to-Cap.
The event is a multi-day party in D.C. put on by the Sacramento Metro Chamber. Hundreds of Sacramento leaders and their handlers schlep to the national capitol for a few days to rub shoulders with each other and drink too much. If you can spare a few thousand dollars from your office budget, you might be able to go someday as well. But you’ll be sitting through meetings with politicians and leaders who already have an interest in the Sacramento region, like congressional members Ami Bera and Doris Matsui. Then you can come home and pretend like you accomplished something, too.
Taking a week off is one thing, and they might even be able to convince us to give the council a second week to nurse their hangovers or the cold they picked up on the plane. But why, after three weeks of nothing getting done, does Tuesday afternoon’s City Council meeting agenda seem so… well, boring? It’s not even worthy of a 5 p.m. session that is customarily saved for matters of broad public interest.
Out of Tuesday afternoon’s 40 total items, 35 are on the consent calendar, with an estimated, allocated time of about 5 minutes. The remaining five items are minor, though arguably consequential, such as discussing some financing to help redevelop the former Arco Arena site in Natomas. The cogs of a city must keep turning, no matter how small.
But after nearly a month of silence, you would think the city would have something serious to discuss — like the budget that’s due soon, as the fiscal year comes to an end in just a few weeks.
If that’s not enough for the city to focus on, how about saving the Camp Resolution homeless encampment from threatened closure or finally opening more Safe Ground locations that the city promised last year?
When asked why the city council hadn’t met for three weeks, City Media and Communications Officer Tim Swanson provided a link to the official council meeting calendar and said the budget proposal will be out “in the coming days,” which doesn’t really answer my question. Sacramento’s leadership has taken a vacation from all its challenges and had a spring break that any collegian would envy. The party’s over.
