A cautionary tale about Calabasas spending

editorial


The trickle-down effect of the new Calabasas Senior Center is making some residents nervous.

The city’s elderly have been clamoring for a place to call their own for the past five years. But construction on the $4.5-million center is already a reported $110,000 over budget, and imposing high membership fees to pay for the shortfall is not an option, the City Council says, even for the wealthy retirees who plan to use it. (See story on Page 1.)

The City of Calabasas, as you know, never does anything short of first class, and with its golden programs and facilities, the senior center will be a crown jewel when construction is completed this summer. Putting pencil to paper, the City Council reduced the annual expense to run the center from $681,000 to $518,000. But the cost remains high, and with a reduction in membership fees from a proposed $300 a year to $100 a year, the revenues to run the senior center are proving to be insufficient.

For starters, staffing and other amenities for the facility were too ambitious. By reassigning a pair of parks and recreation employees to the center and implementing other cost-saving measures, a projected $447,000 annual deficit was reduced to $195,000, the city says. Still, the new facility will be a slow drain on the municipal budget. Enterprise operations that don’t break even are nothing new in Calabasas. For years it’s struggled to stay in the black with its publicly owned Tennis and Swim Center and Creekside Klubhouse preschool. While parks and recreation facilities aren’t supposed to be money-making ventures, they can at least try to pay for themselves. Not surprisingly, the senior center will run in the red.

Calabasas residents who already pay a utility users tax for the right to live in the city can’t be happy . . . which is why the city believes the development of new homes and hotels on Las Virgenes Road is so critical. A pair of four-story hotels and some 70 homes to be built in the city’s western gateway will not only bring an estimated $1 million a year in tax revenue to the city—some of which can be used to help run the senior center—but the projects will provide new jobs and give a boost to nearby restaurants and businesses.

In the past, development on the east side of the city has paid for municipal services on the west side. Now it’s time for new development on the west side to pay for programs and services on the east side, such as the senior center. What’s fair is fair.

What’s troubling is that Calabasas has had a hard time living within its means lately. A utility tax—plus healthy property tax revenue from high-end real estate and sales tax revenue from multiple car dealerships—should give the city ample funds with which to operate. But ambitious projects like the senior center don’t come cheaply, and now the revenue from new development is being called upon to help pay the piper. It’s a sticky place to be.



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