BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — Over a dozen Bakersfield residents spoke in opposition of the City's proposed budget for the 2025-26 Fiscal Year, taking issue mostly with Bakersfield PD seeing the largest increase in funding.
- Public hearing held for Bakersfield's proposed budget for 2025-26.
- Residents criticized increased funding for the police department, calling for more investment in community services.
- Following the public hearing, City Council member Andrae Gonzales and Vice Mayor Manpreet Kaur said they'd like to see future budget hearings moved to the evening so residents who work during the day would be able to be more involved with the process.
- Wednesday night's hearing was just meant to give Council an insight into how the community is feeling about the budget. The earliest City Council would be able to take action, including adoption would be at the next City Council meeting in two weeks.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
At a public hearing for the 2025-26 proposed Bakersfield City budget over one dozen people spoke in opposition, I’m Sam Hoyle your neighborhood reporter, the residents who spoke out against the budget saying money that’s proposed to go to things like the Bakersfield Police Pepartment, saying it could go to other items like affordable housing and community services.
In short, many residents were frustrated to see that the Bakersfield Police Department would be receiving an increase in funding while other areas of the city budget were seeing cuts.
“Next year’s recommended budget has the economic and community development team facing an overall cut of 2.5 million dollars. It only takes 4% of the city’s general funds. By contrast BPD’s budget will grow by 12 million dollars and it’s slated to receive almost 46% of the city’s discretionary general funds for a total of 196 million,” said Ashe Huang.
Another resident offering solutions for where that funding could go.
“We could be putting that money towards our actual community like a lot of my colleagues have said already. We need permanent eviction protection program for our community, permanent rental assistance programs for our communities, our communities need help paying their water bill, their electricity bill, their utility bills, let’s focus on our actual community, not policing our community,” said Valeria Garcia
Another resident mentioned they were frustrated by a lack of transparency in the city’s presentation leading up to the public hearing, but city council members noted that a lot of discussion regarding the budget took place already, but some city council members said they would like to see the meeting’s moved to the evening to give residents who a work a better chance to take part in the process.
“We’ve had a number of hearings have been in the middle of the day, during the school year, teachers are teaching, students are in class and most folks are working. It’s difficult for most folks to get to city hall during the workday and so, we need to do a better job of that as well. Move these public hearings, move these presentations, when we go into all of the details of every different department, we need to move all of those things to the evening in my opinion,” said Andrae Gonzalez.
The budget was not adopted on Wednesday night, the earliest that the City of Bakersfield would be able to take action including adoption of that proposed budget will be at the next Bakersfield City Council meeting in two weeks.
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