The Arvin City Council approved the city’s budget on July 28 after revisions for fiscal year 2026-2027 were made in order to improve the city’s 10% financial deficit and focus on public safety.
This decision finally came after the city had multiple hearings on the budget. The changes will impact different areas of the city’s departments, affecting employees, residents, services, and projects.
City Manager Jeff Jones presented the City’s budget to the council and members of the public with revised budget allocations. Jones noted that on June 23, the City Council had adopted the budget and revisited it to redirect and restore two police officer positions that had been previously removed. Jones said City Council expressed a desire to preserve public safety and staffing to the greatest extent possible and direct staff to identify alternate expenditure reductions or cost-saving measures in the budget.
Jones recommended the following 10 revisions to the fiscal 2026-2027 budget:
- Do not fill the vacant community services officer position, cost savings of $96,000
- Eliminate proposed market adjustment for Police Chief recruitment, costs $40,000
- Eliminate proposed market adjustments for Finance Director recruitment, costs $40,000
- Discontinue temporary help at City Hall, costs $54,000
- Discontinue non-mandated flood insurance coverage at Adobe Complex, saves $12,000
- Reduce City Council conference & travel budget by 50%, saves $3,500
- Eliminate Police Department community event expenses, saves $6,500
- Reduce other community event budgets by 50% or $7,000
- Reduce employee education reimbursement budget, saves $7,000
- Reduce outside consultant expenditures by $30,000
- For a total of $296,000 in cost reductions
According to Jones, these recommendations address the issue of two police officers and identified another $46,000 in cuts. Jones said Arvin City Council members decided to forgo their stipend for the entire year, saving $31,000, and will be addressed in the next special meeting on July 29, as it is not a formal action and is not included in the budget.
In addition to these budget changes, a 1% sales tax will also be placed on the upcoming November ballot, giving voters in Arvin the opportunity to decide if the increase will go into effect.
During the public comment portion, David Camacho, SEIU Local 521 representative, spoke regarding the city budget cuts and expressed his concerns within the city. He stated that there is a proposal to the city to lay off Arvin City employees and how these workers are essential.
“These workers are the backbone of the community. They live here. They were born here and contribute to the local economy,” said Camacho.
Camacho emphasized his final thoughts on what Arvin needs and not to have layoffs for Arvin employees.
“Give Arvin what it deserves; at least have the government working for them. We turn to the table with the City of Arvin police and employees. No employee layoffs. Please don’t take one step forward and two steps back,” said Camacho.
Councilmember Susana Reyes expressed her gratitude towards Jones, council members, and the mayor for collaborating together and identifying solutions for the city.
“It is not an easy task, but we were able to try to find solutions and try to continue moving the city forward. Hopefully they’re just temporary cuts. And hopefully we can just come out of this and just move the city forward,” said Reyes.
Mayor Olivia Calderon stated that the City is working hard to address the amount of spending, and they have analyzed the budget and understand they need to cut their spending as the city does not have that money.
Calderon stated that the money the city has is from taxes the city receives, and it goes toward spending what the city needs; with cuts, it will impact the community.
“The money we spend is on the city services that the city provides to every resident that lives here in Arvin. And with these significant cuts that are incredibly painful, as Reyes alluded to, we know that city services will be impacted,” said Calderon.
She continued to address the city’s limit in spending and having to lay off workers, hoping only temporarily.
“Eliminating spending means we are laying off city workers who are essential to delivering these city services. Absolutely essential. But we know that we’ve gone through and said, what cuts can happen now, temporarily. Our intention is that this is temporary, and that soon we can bring everybody back again is our goal.
Calderon explained that with the city’s future improvements, they will implement public workers, employees, and other changes that have been affected by the final budget.
“As soon as our finances stabilize, we will work to bring back those employees. And then we can start to rebuild our reserves that have also been depleted and move forward to do the good work that the community has requested of us, which is said loud and clear: prioritize the roads, fix the streets, and bring our parks back to life,” said Calderon.
