City of Monterey looks at 2021 priorities
Plan for post-pandemic, aiding renters, replacing infrastructure and adding EV charging stations on top of list.
MONTEREY >> Elected officials in Monterey Tuesday were briefed on the city’s top priorities for 2021, including how it will navigate the reopening of the city when COVID-19 is tamped down, adding sustainable services like EV charging stations and solar energy, ongoing renter assistance, and how to replace badly needed infrastructure.
The latter is something most department heads in the city addressed over the two hours spent in the workshop with city staff. Nearly every department in the city, from police to parks, needs additional infrastructure — building upgrades or replacements, new vehicles, information systems, to name just a few.
But Councilman Ed Smith reminded his colleagues the city is facing a $31 million deficit over two fiscal years which is a “massive hole that we are not out of yet” and may not be out of until late 2022.
“It’s great to think about but we can’t make any decisions yet,” Smith said. “We need to get our revenue up to where it needs to be and then we can start talking about replacing or renewing buildings.”
Some infrastructure, however, may be too critical to wait, like information systems security.
“Security threats continue to hit us,” so cybersecurity is a focus, said Assistant City Manager Nat Rojanasathira. Systems security becomes even more important as more employees are working from home and are depending on a secure network between the living room and city servers.
Security experts warn about insecure web applications that a user can download and then inadvertently provide a highway for bad actors to enter a government or enterprise network. City officials, including Rojanasathira, say their firewalls and other security measures are more than sufficient to handle threats.
But threats evolve, as recently demonstrated by likely Russian actors hacking into U.S. military and intelligence agency networks, requiring security measures to evolve with equal vigor.
Other issues in Monterey have an immediacy, as well. In the Community Development side of city government, director Kim Cole briefed the city council on its priorities in the coming year. Housing tops that list.
The city’s renter’s assistance program has helped renters keep current with their leases to the tune of $626,000. The city is issuing $135,000 in checks this week alone. But the need is great. Cole noted that there have been 150 renter assistance inquiries just in the past two days.
Of course, affordable housing is always on the agendas of elected officials, and the city is trying to address the crisis by working with developers on projects like the Garden Road conversions of commercial buildings into hundreds of new apartments that include many affordable units.
But while nearly everyone agrees the city should pursue programs to help provide more housing, any enthusiasm is tempered by the elephant in the room: water.
“We’re in a double bind,” Councilman Alan Haffa said. “The state is telling us to build more housing but when we want to convert commercial to residential the state says that might not be acceptable. We’ve dramatically reduced the amount of water we are using but the state seems to be saying it’s not a new water (source) so it doesn’t count. I’ve got a real problem with that.”
Smith encouraged the council and the public to re-read the California Water Resources Board’s complaint number 95-10. The Carmel River is in overdraft so there is no “new” water that can be pumped from there. There has been one extension granted so the public shouldn’t expect another, he said.
“There will be grave consequences coming in the next one to two years,” Smith said. “We are going to relive this until we have a new source of water. And I guarantee it will end up in court.”