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By Jeff Nibert
Pleasanton’s residents deserve straight talk. Regarding Pleasanton’s newly approved two-year budget, the city’s financial future remains precarious.
The process to create a budget following the failure of Measure PP was necessarily long and arduous. Painful cuts were made. Our residents who engaged in the process are to be thanked and commended.
I voted in favor of the resulting final budget as the culmination of the hard work of our city staff, the Budget Advisory Committee and all involved. Despite my reservations, I believe the City Council needs to show unanimity of resolve, not necessarily complete agreement, to move the city forward.
The mayor’s Guest Opinion in the June 20 issue, while laudatory, obscures the big picture regarding two serious threats to our future: Pleasanton’s rapidly escalating pension contributions and the very high cost to fix the city’s deteriorated infrastructure and facilities, following years of deferring their maintenance.
While the City Council did make tough decisions, a council majority also voted to sidestep other recommended actions that were before us to tackle the structural deficit. In my opinion, we as a body fell short, and because of that, the remaining gap in the new budget is now filled with onetime money and lost opportunity.
Some difficult choices are still being deferred or overshadowed. In other words, on these serious threats, the proverbial can was kicked further down the road.
With our pension situation, the big picture metric is the unfunded liability. The Section 115 Pension Trust is meant to keep a lid on our unfunded liability.
In March, the city’s actuary recommended ideally not taking money out of the trust, as doing so increases our liability. I myself wrestled with following the alternate path taken by the council.
The decision to withdraw $3 million means it will be unavailable for both future use and compounded earnings — whether it’s interest or principal doesn’t matter. That is the wrong direction as the city heads into the critical period when pension costs, which have already ballooned, are forecast to soar. Just because we can raid the trust doesn’t mean we should.
Furthermore, the investment in Pleasanton’s infrastructure and facilities has been woefully inadequate for many years. While the added allocation in this budget is welcome, it still is not powerful enough to meet any significant fraction of the enormous need. In the original draft budget, city staff had recommended $1.6 million more for the Deferred Maintenance program than what the council approved.
Considering the critical infrastructure conditions that exist, denying the recommended amount was also a step in the wrong direction. When facilities break down, the services they provide go away. Right now, there is a long list of needed repairs that $1.6 million could have helped to fund, above and beyond the final budget dollars. In this respect, the budget doesn’t do enough to safeguard our quality of life.
The city will seek measures to increase revenue, but these will likely take years to make a dent in the still alarming financial forecast. Without significant new revenue of millions of dollars annually, the required improvements to city facilities and infrastructure, as well as mandatory pension funding, will either lead to deeper cuts to city services or become impossible to implement.
Yes, Pleasanton will have a balanced budget. But the financial situation is not all happy talk. Pleasanton is not out of the fiscal woods, not by a long shot.
Editor’s note: Jeff Nibert is in his third year on the Pleasanton City Council, representing District 1 in the northwest part of the city. Nibert is serving as vice mayor during 2025.
