City budget rebounds from pandemic losses
May. 12, 2021 at 6:00 am
After dire warnings of multi-year shortfalls just last year, City Hall has released a new budget that projected no deficits in coming years.
The City of Santa Monica has released its proposed Biennial Budget for Fiscal Years 2021-23, and Interim City Manager Lane Dilg said Santa Monica’s long-term goals are still attainable due to a combination of budget cuts and rebounding revenue streams.
Last year, in the midst of historic volatility and the economic devastation brought on by the pandemic, staff’s forecast detailed an annual General Fund deficit of $48 million, $102 million and $74 million over the coming years. The proposed budget released Monday reflects no deficit either now or in the associated five-year forecast.
Small businesses in Santa Monica amongst hardest hit by Covid in the nation
May. 07, 2021 at 6:00 am
Retail: Santa Monica’s business community has been hard hit. Clara Harter
As the dust begins to settle around the economic carnage of Covid-19, it appears that small businesses are amongst the City’s greatest casualties.
A study by accounting software service QuickBooks, identified Santa Monica as one of the US cities where small businesses revenues plummeted the most during the first year of the pandemic.
Their team calculated that the median small business in Santa Monica experienced a $26,000 revenue decrease from April 2020 through March 2021. This ranks Santa Monica as the 5th hardest hit city in the nation, in terms of small businesses, following Manhattan, Brooklyn, San Francisco and Honolulu.