BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Staff Writer
The city of San Carlos is boasting an $8.8 million surplus after officials predicted that the city would have a $2 million deficit.
That means the city brought in some $11 million more than it was expecting.
San Carlos’s budget is about $40 million, so the surplus is around 20% of the city’s entire budget.
Administrative Services Director Rebecca Mendenhall is recommending that the council put $3 million toward a “public safety and wildfire mitigation reserve,” $5.3 million into the city’s pension fund and another $3 million into the city’s project fund. The additional $2 million is from leftover surplus from last year.
Part of the reason for the surplus is that the city didn’t spend $6.4 million that was expected to go to projects and salaries, according to Mendenhall’s report. Many positions remained open because of the labor shortage.
The other $5 million came from increased property taxes ($2.1 million), sales tax increases ($900,000) and other tax increases ($2.7 million) that the city didn’t anticipate.
