Mayor's Blog: Capitola's Benchmark Study and What It Means

Editor's Note: The City of Capitola released a study earlier this week which compares the city to other comparable cities in the state. The study showed that Capitola uses its revenues wisely. Some people have been skeptical about the study and called it self serving. Here is Mayor Mike Termini's take on the study.

This evening the Capitola City Council will receive a report prepared by William Statler, a municipal finance analyst.

First off, I would like to make a statement with regard to consultants. Anyone who has listened to me at the meetings should, by now, know that I am no friend of consultants or the reports they create. Also, anyone should be skeptical of any report, especially favorable ones, financed by the agency being reported on.

I must say that in this case there are extenuating circumstances. Mr. Statler was our interim finance director for some months while we recruited for a permanent director. We were able to find, hire and start a new finance director several months before anticipated. We were left with having a contract with one of the most experienced and respected public finance professionals in the state with several months left to complete. We used the excess in his contract to have him study several other California cities to see how we measured up with regard to our fiscal responsibility and process. Some are condemning the report as just a self-promoting, back slapping exercise but if you read closely that is not the case.

While we did, in fact, score highly in some areas, one being our foresight in instituting a PERS cap on our employees five years ago, well before the word "second tier" was ever used in other cities, and bonding our unfunded liability for retirement, which will be completely paid off in four years, there are other areas where we need to make changes. That was the point of the study — to help identify areas for improvement as we move the City forward.

Keep in mind that the same metrics that were used in our study were used in a similar Benchmark Study for the City of San Luis Obispo.  In other words, the metrics were identified and selected prior to the identification of the benchmark cities, or the collection of any data. Our own finance advisory committee recommended this study!

I think it would be enlightening for all citizens of Capitola to take a moment to read over the report and even come to the meeting to comment or just listen. I have placed this item first on the agenda of public hearings so it will be easily accessible to everyone early in the evening.