Carlsbad cuts chief innovation officer, DEI manager positions to balance 2024-25 budget

Carlsbad plans to drop the equivalent of 12 full-time positions, mostly jobs already vacant, and transfer some of those responsibilities to other departments to balance its 2024-25 budget.

Two full-time, occupied positions are included. One is chief innovation officer, held by David Graham, a former San Diego city employee hired to fill the newly created position in 2018. Graham's base annual salary in 2022 was $207,752 and his total compensation, including benefits and pension debt, was $289,810, according to Transparent California.

Transparent California's website lists 28 other Carlsbad city employees whose compensation was higher than Graham's in 2022.

The other occupied, full-time position being cut is diversity, equity and inclusion general program manager, created in 2021 and filled by Nancy Magpusao Burke. The website shows Burke's base salary was $121,152 and her total compensation was $161,596 in 2022.

"This has been difficult for me as a professional, and I appreciate the grace in which Mr. Graham has been handling this," City Manager Scott Chadwick said at Tuesday's Carlsbad City Council meeting. He added that "the same goes for our DEI individual" Burke.

"No one likes to hear or read about their positions being eliminated," Chadwick said.

Aside from one part-time position, all other positions to be eliminated are vacant. They are: management analyst; senior office specialist; deputy city clerk; lead librarian; two part-time production technicians; parks maintenance worker; associate engineer; information technology system specialist; a part-time administrative assistant; part-time administrative assistant; and part-time senior environmental specialist.

A final version of next year's budget, including the staff reductions, is expected to go to the City Council for approval June 18.

This will be the second year in a row that the city has reduced its workforce. Administrators said the cuts will stop a slow slide toward a budget deficit that city administrators have predicted for the past few years.

Last year, the City Council considered three possible new sources of revenue: increasing its sales tax by 1 percent, legalizing and taxing cannabis sales, or raising the transient occupancy tax, often called TOT, paid by hotel guests.

All three were rejected, and the council asked Chadwick and the staff to find other solutions.

"The budget does hit the mark in many areas," Councilmember Priya Bhat-Patel said during the council's review of the budget Tuesday.

"We've done a great job navigating a really confusing and tricky economic time" after the financial straits of the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, but the city needs to keep looking for ways to increase revenue.

She opposed the loss of the diversity, equity and inclusion position and said the loss "a bummer," and "a disservice to the community."

"I can tell you that the work is not done on DEI," Bhat-Patel said.

"DEI tends to be a buzzword for folks, and people get really stressed out about it," she said. "But diversity, equity and inclusion does not just mean ethnicity and race. It means intergenerational diversity, it means people of different abilities, people of different walks of life.

"Those are the people that live in our community," she said. "It truly means that we would serve the whole of our community."

Councilmember Teresa Acosta said everyone could see some changes.

"It's always hard to make cuts, but at the same time nobody wants to pay more," she said. "We have to think about our future and be proactive."

Budget adjustments are needed because the city's rate of growth is slowing and its costs for management and maintenance are increasing, city officials said.

"The city manager made some difficult decisions," Mayor Keith Blackburn said Tuesday. "He's found a way to keep the same service levels by moving positions around."

The proposed 2024-25 general fund budget includes $239.1 million in revenue and $238.5 million in expenses.

The largest part of revenue, or $94.9 million, will come from property taxes, an increase of 3.1 percent over the previous fiscal year.

Sales tax is the city's second-largest revenue source, expected to bring $59.4 million next year, only a 0.5 percent increase from fiscal 2023-24. Transient occupancy tax, the third largest, is budgeted for $34.8 million next year, the same amount as this year.

Personnel costs make up 57 percent of the city's general fund budget. Even with the anticipated staff reductions, the total personnel budget for next year is $134.7 million, which is $4.6 million or 3.6 percent greater than this year.

The costs are driven up by higher payments to CalPERS, the public employees retirement system, and by step increases and negotiated compensation increases for employees.

Carlsbad has $149 million in its general fund reserve. That amount equals 63 percent of the city's annual budget, well above the city's goal of 40 percent.

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune .