Fixing the Budget Before It’s a Crisis

Hermosa Beach is heading into a structural deficit next year, driven by aging infrastructure and no new revenue identified to cover it. This isn't a surprise. It's predictable, and predictable problems are solvable if a city plans ahead instead of waiting for the crisis to force its hand.

• Maggie has done this work before: passed $87M in facility bonds by building real community trust, not just asking for money, and managed $100M in budgets while maintaining a strong reserve and resorting to layoffs as a last measure.

• The fix isn't a single cut or a single tax. It's the kind of multi-year financial planning that keeps a city out of emergency mode, the same discipline that kept the school district financially healthy through COVID and years of enrollment swings.

• Hermosa doesn't need more reactive budget seasons. It needs a plan that gets ahead of the deficit now, while there's still time to choose the right mix of solutions instead of being forced into the fastest one.