Santa Ana officials are on track to approve next year’s roughly $778 million overall budget – the last big spending plan council members say they’ll adopt before they start tightening the belt as they stare down the barrel of an estimated $30 million budget deficit in four years.
“It is going to be the last big budget that we have before we have to make some really difficult decisions,” said City Councilwoman Thai Viet Phan at Tuesday’s city council meeting about next year’s budget.
That projected deficit could threaten funding for police, fire and ambulance services, park maintenance and library services when Measure X, a 1.5% sales tax measure approved in 2018, starts to sunset in 2029 and the city loses about $30 million in revenue…