Santa Clarita City Manager Ken Striplin provided an outlook of the city’s budget, a snapshot of the economic forecast and a few of the challenges ahead as the staff begins annual preparations for the city’s spending plan.
The Santa Clarita City Council is scheduled to approve the budget in June for the city’s 2025-26 fiscal year, which begins July 1, but before that happens, there are months of analyses and meetings with budget committees and commissioners, which kicked off Tuesday at City Hall.
Striplin led with the global outlook, which he referred to as “stable but underwhelming.”
The data projects 3.2% growth, which is virtually unchanged from 2024, he said. The national forecast calls for about 2.4% growth based on a pair of forecasts.
Two of the significant takeaways from the financial forecast included Striplin’s candid answers about questions on the future of the local film industry and projections for the housing market.
Mayor Bill Miranda asked specifically how the city would be affected by a widely reported slowdown in regional filming, an industry estimated to have an impact in the tens of millions of dollars.
The city’s number of filming days was down from around 1,300 to fewer than 900 at last report, Miranda said.
“So the thing with filming for us, it’s not as much as a direct revenue provider to the city,” Striplin said, adding the loss of permit revenue was maybe $100,000, compared to the city’s preliminary projected general fund revenue for 2025-26, which is $150.3 million.
That’s against anticipated expenditures of about $150 million.
“It’s the shopping out here for the supplies that they need, it’s the restaurants that they utilize during the filming days,” Striplin said. “It’s really more the impact it has on local businesses around them, which is why we use the term ‘economic impact.’”
The most recent estimates from the city indicate that figure has gone from more than $30 million to around $19 million last year.
Expected rebounds for the housing and vehicle markets provided a bit of good news for revenue.
Home sales increased last year by about 7%, based on figures from the Southland Regional Association of Realtors, a SoCal industry association. The National Association of Realtors expects existing home sales to rise 9% next year and 13% in 2026.
Councilwoman Patsy Ayala asked if there was any concern for the local budget about President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders that threatened to cut federal funding in a number of areas.
Striplin said it was initially something the city was preparing for but that his understanding of the latest on the situation is that it was not happening.
“That being said, had that remained in effect, there would have been challenges, the vast majority of our transit system is federally funded,” in addition to regional grants, Striplin said.
There also were a couple of requests from the community for the coming budget year.
During the question-and-answer portion with council members and their appointed committee members, Planning Commissioner Lisa Eichman, also on the Asset Management District Committee for the Saugus Union School District, put in a call for help.
The school district committee is in the process of determining what will be done with the campus of Santa Clarita Elementary School, which, due to its age and expected cost of retrofitting, was closed last year.
“I am reaching out to the city to hopefully put in their budget next year, some way, some kind of joint partnership with Santa Clarita,” she said, adding she was grateful city officials have been at the school district’s meetings.
“I’m begging and pleading because we don’t want to see housing or anything like that,” she said. “It needs to be something for the community, library, community center, extension of our parks or all three.”
Former Councilman TimBen Boydston, speaking as director of Main Street’s Canyon Theatre Guild, asked if the city could allocate funding for a trolley that would benefit the neighborhood’s businesses due to parking challenges in Downtown Newhall.
When Councilwoman Marsha McLean later took a shine to the idea, Striplin replied rhetorically whether there were any matching funds for the plan from Boydston.
