Charting a New Financial Path to Victory

In 2018, I arrived in the City of Hemet and the picture was bleak. The City was on the verge of financial insolvency, and was about to begin the use of emergency reserves to fund day to day operations. This trend had already made itself known to the California State Auditor, and she rightfully identified Hemet as a "high risk city" headed straight for insolvency. Since I had just spent 8.5 years in San Bernardino, I knew exactly where this was heading. I was not surprised to hear that some of the discussions prior to my arrival already involved the dreaded word: #bankruptcy.

I knew I had my work cut out for me.

What began that year was the beginning of a heavy lift. One that required a methodical game plan, and charting an immediate path to correcting this trajectory. We provided a balanced budget to the Council; however, it was not without its challenges.

Over the next three years, and as Hemet City Manager, we slowly began to chip away at the financial insolvency issues. This included a critical review of every single line item in the budget, and providing the Council with budgets that aligned actual expenditure capacity with recommended figures. We methodically managed the City's overtime line items with operational changes, and changed the narrative.

Little by little we were making progress.

In 2021, we received word that the State Auditor had removed the City from the "high risk" list and into the "Low Risk" category. We successfully identified a plan, implemented it, and were now seeing the outcomes.

While this was a significant lift, all the credit goes to the management team who provided the recommended changes to the City Council who adopted budgets that did not rely on one time revenues, or rely on perpetuating the deficit spending ways of previous decades.

This is the perfect example of when good management practices align with good policy decisions of a City Council.

Feel free to check out the dashboard yourself here: https://www.auditor.ca.gov/local_high_risk/dashboard-csa