Pasadena City Hall under a cloudy sky on Wednesday, February 7, 2024. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
The city of Pasadena is preparing for the possibility that proposed state budget cuts could result in cuts to funding for its health department and homeless housing programs.
On June 3, the Pasadena City Council received an update from staff on the city’s proposed fiscal year 2025 operating budget in anticipation of it being adopted next Monday, June 10.
Among the items discussed was Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to cut $300 million from the public health budget under a program called “The Future of Public Health” to close the state’s $45 billion budget deficit, a move city officials said would have a major impact on local governments like Pasadena.
Finance Director Matt Hawksworth said at the meeting that the budget cuts could result in a $1 million reduction in the city’s “core” public health budget, which was created by the province during the pandemic.
“We currently support eight full-time staff members and provide funding for many operations that do not have grant funding or other public health funding sources,” he said.
In Pasadena, the funding is being allocated primarily to six public health areas, including homeless service coordination, climate resilience, epidemiology, infectious disease control and prevention and community health workforce coordination, Manuel Carmona, deputy director of the Pasadena Department of Public Health, said Thursday.
“So this touches on a range of core public health programs aimed at building the infrastructure we need to protect public health as well as preparing and building capacity to respond to the next public health emergency like COVID-19,” he said.
For example, the funding enabled agency officials to detect and respond to the first locally transmitted cases of dengue fever in California last October, Carmona said.
The funding also supports programs such as the Pasadena Outreach Response Team (PORT), a multi-agency effort established in 2018 to connect homeless people to the resources they need. Additionally, the funding supports public information initiatives and public health nurses who do general practice work in the community, Hawksworth said.
“As of last weekend, the joint legislative budget proposal rejected the governor’s proposed cuts, which is a positive thing,” he said. “And it shows that there’s significant local advocacy work underway, both individually in the city and by us who have signed on with other public health jurisdictions to oppose these cuts.”
Hawksworth said funding for the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention Program (HHAP) 6, which supports the city’s street assistance, emergency shelter and rapid rehousing programs, is also targeted for cuts by the governor.
“The housing commissioner said we should have enough funding to get through FY25 because we still have funding for HHAP 5,” he said. “If HHAP 6 is cut, we’re going to be underfunded going forward unless we get funding for next year.”
The Legislature has until June 15 to pass the budget.
Carmona said the cuts would mean the loss of eight full-time employees at the Department of Public Health, one of the few city-run health departments in the state, but that the department may be able to keep them through other grant funding.
“However, given each employee’s situation, our ability to transfer them to other vacant positions within the department will depend on a variety of factors,” he said. “They will not be focusing on these areas of public health, but will still maintain their services through other programs that will be funded by the grant.”
Meanwhile, the city of Pasadena is moving forward with its own budgeting process, gathering input from staff and various subcommittees and meetings with community members.
Questions arose at the public safety committee meeting about whether the police department would be able to fill the remaining positions: The department has approved 240 sworn positions but is currently budgeted for 235 because of long-term vacancies, Hawksworth said.
“They are working hard to fill all 235 positions, but don’t anticipate exceeding 235 in the upcoming fiscal year 2025,” he said. “They are focused on attracting and retaining new talent, and the goal is to fill all 240 positions by fiscal year 2026.”
There was also a question about whether the city could open Kennedy Pool and Villa Park Pool on Sundays during the three summer months. Hawksworth said this could be done by utilizing existing summer staffing. In fiscal year 2025, this would be estimated to cost $25,000 for 14 Sundays, eight hours a day.
Among other changes to the budget, Hawksworth said, the Rose Bowl operator was asked to remove from the budget an unapproved family golf project that would have tripled the company’s driving range and added 36 holes of mini-golf. Hawksworth said removing the project would have reduced estimated revenues by $1.6 million, expenses by about $1.5 million and net income by about $72,000.
