Fremont budget accounting for potential recession

FREMONT Fremont city agents are warning that economic advancement may be stunted over the next year even as several residents are demanding more funding for services for the unhoused following strict bans on camping in RVs or in tents The Bay Area s fourth largest city proposes an operating budget of million with million in its general fund according to Fremont authorities At a May meeting residents appealed the City Council to push money toward homeless services and other city programs Related Articles Seven approaches Trump s tax and spending bill could affect Californians Ramachandran Oakland demands a heritage of enforcement Things to know about no tax on tips Trump s tax pledge that s included in GOP budget bill San Mateo County to require quarterly reports on big-ticket purchases Evan Low-run national LGBTQ nonprofit to receive from Santa Clara County Liz Ames the District BART director for Fremont questioned council to show promise that homeless residents have a housing response She also appealed that the city reduce the amount of police personnel tasked with removing homeless camps and temporary shelters We don t have a place for those folks to go and it s just a vicious cycle of moving the homeless encampments around the city with no resolution Ames declared This comes as the city is fighting in federal court over its just now proposed homeless camping ban which is one of the strictest in the state The ban which was amended to remove an aiding and abetting clause could have punished someone for helping homeless residents by providing tents or other temporary shelter that the city considered camping paraphernalia The city last fall also passed a RV camping ban which requires large trucks and other oversized vehicles such as RVs move at least feet within hours and limits parking on city streets to just -hours Our unhoused residents are facing almost daily crises They need a safe place to sleep until adequate safe and secure shelters can be provided for all in need resident William Bain wrote to council in an email ahead of the budget hearing Both Ames and Bain demanded the council to direct their attention and materials to Fremont s five-year Homeless Response Plan adopted on May The plan outlines city goals to stop the expansion of homelessness increase pathways to housing and reduce the impacts of homelessness According to the city s proposed budget for the - fiscal year the city is planning to spend about million on homeless services with an estimated million left to spend in a homeless services fund In an interview this week Mayor Raj Salwan reported there s not much wiggle room left for additional funds for unhoused residents or the Homeless Response Plan Salwan commented the city is waiting on a good chunk hundreds of millions in funds from Measure W a -year tax hike voters passed in November Fremont now has its hands tied on generating any additional sources of funding for addressing homelessness the mayor disclosed We just have limited guidance at this time At this point we can t expand on that Salwan revealed We want to do our part but we re also waiting on the county Finance Director David Persselin communicated council during the budget hearing that while President Trump s proposed tariffs are expected to slow down the nation s business activity residents locally won t feel the effects until later A few businesses have been purchasing goods at pre-tariff prices and selling them lower than field prices with the tariffs Persselin commented Once these goods are sold out perhaps by the end of June then prices will inflate more significantly and the local market system will likely start to slow he explained He projected the impacts of Trump s tariffs won t be felt until at least after the first quarter of the next fiscal year either in November or December this year It will be a while before we really know how things are playing out Persselin mentioned The state through this year is also finishing recouping the million in overpaid sales tax to Fremont which began in The city was able to repay the majority of the accidental tax hiccup by drawing down its financial reserves from about million to a meager million leaving the city of over residents with a limited cushion in the face of any economic collapse Won t an actual recession leave us with nothing left Councilman Raymond Liu petitioned Persselin Persselin mentioned the remaining reserves would leave the city with at least a little bit of cushion in a full-blown recession He added officers would come back to the council at a later date if the budget needed rebalancing Salwan questioned if any other federal money is on the chopping block for Fremont due financial decisions coming from the country s executive branch We re definitely at peril Persselin stated noting that the feds have mentioned potentially cutting certain grant funding countrywide We are benefitting from certain grant programs in a number of areas human services community safety capital projects Fremont s proposed budget shows that the city expects to spend about of its money on police fire and maintenance work Police will be taking the lion s share of nearly half of overall spending Last year the city spent over million on police with million projected to be spent by the end of the fiscal year in June According to records obtained by this news organization Fremont spent over million on police overtime through last year and nearly million on overtime through the beginning of April Beginning in January the city offered a raise and a double overtime pilot undertaking in an attempt to retain and hire more officers with authorities citing difficulty in staffing the department s force of over rank-and-file officers Records show the city paid out about million in double overtime through the beginning of April