Brandvold confronted on diversity of budget review committee

Challenged on the makeup of his budget review committee, Mayor Ted Brandvold told a Latino Community Roundtable audience the selections reflect the expertise needed to quickly understand the budget process.

After a presentation to a luncheon crowd Thursday about his first 90 or so days in office and his goals as mayor, Brandvold took questions. An audience member asked why Brandvold didn’t reach deeper into the community to get a broader ethnic mix and representation from nonprofit groups.

LCR founder Dale Butler referred to the committee an an “elite and exclusive” group of “CPA and CEO types” with one set of skills and said “a better mix would have been the route to go.”

Brandvold answered that he had “100 days to pull this off” and needed men and women who would immediately be able to understand the budget information city staff presented to them. “For me, it took me three times around through that budget to grasp it,” he said.

The mayor noted that the review committee includes Doctors Medical Center CEO Warren Kirk, retired Sutter Health regional President David Benn and others who work with budgets comparable to and greater than the city’s.

The 14-member committee also includes a few women; Rick Dahlseid, former chief financial officer of the nonprofit Community Hospice; at least one Latino, CPA Ralph A. Juarez; and one of the city’s biggest critics, Stanislaus Taxpayers Association President Dave Thomas, who’s “pretty much an everyday citizen,” Brandvold said.

“And these are open to the public, they’re not closed sessions,” he said. “We do have several public people that attend. ...

“Anybody can attend, and I would appreciate it. That is one problem I see in our city, is that everybody – and I don’t mean this in a bad way – people want to be included until you include them often, and then they’re busy or something.”

The committee meetings began April 1 and have been frequent since then. The review process is scheduled to be completed June 30, one day before the city has to have its budget in place, Brandvold said.

The mayor said his immediate goal is to look for budget savings and to re-prioritize spending to bolster public safety and get more police officers on the streets. He said he never expected to discover excess funds. “I’m finding in the budget review there’s a lot less money than people really realize.”

Brandvold also talked about taxes, saying City Hall has sought voter approval for them as a first rather than last resort. His approach, he said, will be to improve government to encourage expansion of the city’s tax base.

The city will appoint a citizen-based red-tape-reduction task force to make City Hall easier to navigate for people who want to start or expand a business, he said. Staff is considering a permit simplification program that many Sacramento-area jurisdictions are using, he said.

And understanding the importance of agriculture in the Modesto area, the city plans regular meetings with the Farm Bureau and groups including the Almond Board of California and the California Poultry Federation to capitalize on the industry, Brandvold said.

Audience member Zach Drivon asked the mayor what the city will do to improve health and human services and community outreach programs.

Improving quality of life will result from building the economy, Brandvold answered. That’s where attracting the ag technologies industry and reducing red tape for businesses come in. “We need to broaden the tax base, bring income into the city and then get programs back that have been cut,” he said. “We cut a lot from the budget years back and it’s time to get those going again.”

Roundtable President Rebecca Harrington told the mayor that in trying to improve Mancini Park, she ran into roadblock after roadblock.

He experienced some of that during his 20 years as an architect, Brandvold said. “We’ve got to learn to say ‘yes’ instead of ‘no.’ ”

In those cases where the answer has to be “no,” he said, the city needs to get better about working with residents on alternative solutions or other ways of satisfying problems.

This story was originally published May 13, 2016 at 1:56 PM with the headline "Brandvold confronted on diversity of budget review committee."