2:48pm | The Long Beach City Council will examine a new take on the idea of creating a “Rainy Day Fund” – or “Revenue Smoothing Fund,” as it’s called this time around – during its meeting next Tuesday in hopes to maintain City services through a belt-tightening budget process.

Councilmembers James Johnson and Gary DeLong are requesting the Council to discuss their RSF proposal and send it to the Budget Oversight Committee for consideration. The committee is composed of DeLong (Chair), Patrick O’Donnell and Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal.

The City Council last considered a similar idea in September 2009, when then-Vice Mayor Val Lerch proposed a fund that would set aside 50% of the City’s surplus in years that revenue increased by 5% over the previous year. Some councilmembers supported the idea in spirit but had issues with its execution, and promised to revisit the idea but never did.

This time around, the idea is the same, with new specifics.

The proposal divides years into “Good” and “Bad” categories. In “Good” years, either half of the revenue increase, or 3-percent of the total General Fund revenues would be placed into the RSF (whichever is less).

In “Bad” years, the City could either withdraw half of the fallen revenues or 3-percent of the total General Fund revenues from the RSF (again, whichever is less).

Click here to download the proposal, which includes a hypothetical example of how the RSF would operate.

If the Council agrees to send the idea back to the Budget Oversight Committee to move forward, City staff would likely work with the committee to draft a new and final proposal that would come back to the Council for final approval.

Much more to come…