The Abridged version:
- The Sacramento City Council adopted the city’s $1.7 billion budget Tuesday night after navigating an initial $66.2 million budget deficit.
- City leaders cut vacant positions in the parks and youth services department and the Sacramento Police Department to balance the budget.
- Staffers said the city is making progress toward climbing out of its structural deficit, though the city’s finances are projected to run in the red for the next five years.
After another year of looming layoffs, service cuts and a $66.2 million budget deficit, the Sacramento City Council approved a balanced budget for the upcoming 2026-27 cycle.
The council voted 7-2 in favor of the new budget, with Councilmembers Lisa Kaplan and Mai Vang casting votes in opposition.
“While we pat ourselves on the back, we nonetheless have a lot of programs that are cut and have an impact across the city, so it’s nothing to say ‘mission accomplished,'” said Mayor Kevin McCarty.
City leaders tightened the amount of expenditures across nearly every department and shrank the city’s total payroll to climb out of the budget deficit.
City cuts 100 full-time jobs
The latest budget cuts about 100 full-time staff positions compared to last year, bringing the city’s total payroll to 4,884 employees.
“This was a difficult budget,” said Peter Coletto, the city’s finance director. “We closed a really large budget gap, council had to make a lot of difficult decisions.”
Coletto added that the budget does not include any “sworn separations” for staff working for the city. City officials have said that although the city may remove some filled positions, those staffers could move to other positions.
The cuts include 62 jobs in the Sacramento Police Department. Currently, the police department keeps some positions vacant and redirects those funds to cover the cost of overtime pay. The police department has 1,030 positions in the new budget.
The cuts also extended to about 24 full-time positions in the Youth, Parks and Community Enrichment department, which will have 654 full-time positions in the new budget.
Over the last month, councilmembers also pushed staff to find a way to keep the city’s four wading pools open and maintain swim hours at public pools. City leaders were able to keep those priorities in the budget, at a cost.
Those dollars arrived through new plans to freeze seven positions for parking enforcement officers, reducing the city’s contribution to its “economic uncertainty” reserve and cutting the community ambassador program. That program gives stipends to community members to help connect underserved communities to city services.
‘Huge progress’ toward closing deficit
Sacramento has budgeted a structural deficit in recent years, in which its baseline expenditures outweigh its revenues.
“While we are still in a structural deficit, this budget makes huge progress on closing that,” Coletto said.
City officials anticipate a deficit of $35.8 million next year. For the next five years, however, the city is still projected to run in the red, according to a forecast provided by Coletto.
Uncertainty about the economy is also providing headwinds, especially with mounting concerns over a recession.
“Inflationary enviroments are very hard for California cities,” Coletto said.
Public safety funding scrutiny
Kaplan said she could not support the proposed cuts to public safety positions, including reductions to the police department, which had 201 full-time vacancies as of March, according to city data. Police officials have said cuts to vacancies could affect levels of service.
“It may actually end up costing the city more in overtime,” Kaplan said.
Vang criticized the budget for dedicating too much to the police department. She urged city staffers to find a way to absorb the overtime costs into the rest of the budget without relying on vacancies.
“Every year, again, we always have the opportunity to reimagine what our budget can look like, and every year we end up balancing the budget on our youth, our parks and our working families,” Vang said.
Felicia Alvarez is a reporter at Abridged covering accountability. She’s called Sacramento home since 2015 and has reported on government, healthcare and breaking news topics for both local and national news outlets.