I remember two dances back when I was younger. I really liked The Stroll, and in fact can still do it. The Limbo, on the other hand, is a different story. It wasn’t really a dance, per se, but it did have a song by the same name. As perhaps you can recall the catch phrase of the song was, “How low can you go.”
Recently I opined on the disastrous financial situation in the state of California, but the financial situation in many of California’s big cities is equally worrisome, and getting worse … how low can they go? While the state of California has some options to alleviate its deficit, the large cities do not have the same options.
From a recent piece by Allysia Finley in the WSJ:
As awful as the budget outlook is in Sacramento, it may be worse for cities across the state, which have few options other than to cut essential services or raise taxes.
The city manager in Sacramento recently suggested patching a $50 million budget gap by taking longer to fix potholes and broken street lights.
San Diego projects a $172 million budget shortfall. ‘Without a new major ongoing revenue source, significant budget cuts to programs and services will be needed to address the city’s structural budget deficit,’ a Dec. 5 budget report stated.
Los Angeles City Administrator Matthew W. Szabo recently warned of a $400 million deficit owing to rising labor costs and lower-than-expected tax revenue. ‘The identification of new revenue sources is one strategy that the City must embrace in order to become more resilient,’ Mr. Szabo wrote in a Jan. 19 report to the City Council.
The trouble is, taxpayers in La La Land are as maxed out as those in the rest of California. San Francisco faces a nearly $800 million deficit despite having imposed several new taxes in recent years, including one on the gross receipts of businesses whose highest-paid manager earns more than 100 times the median compensation of its San Francisco-based employees.”
The deficits in these cities is getting deeper, and question is similar to that in The Limbo … How low can they can go?”
2/7/24