ISLETON, CALIF. — The most serious problems started back in 2004, when Pam Pratt was recalled as mayor of this tiny city on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a half-square-mile known these days for crawdads and municipal chaos.
In the dysfunction that followed, Isleton stopped paying its bills. City workers and council members ran up $600,000 in attorneys' fees. The city spent more than $156,000 that belonged to its waste collector and had to pay it back -- with interest.
Money disappeared from the Crawdad Festival. Budgets were based on growth that never materialized. The city administration raided more than $150,000 from redevelopment funds to keep Isleton running.
Then, just when Isleton had hatched a plan to try to borrow its way to solvency, the economy fell apart.
With tax revenues dwindling and credit scarce, even healthy cities are facing painful choices. Troubled ones are increasingly vulnerable. These days, it's hard to find a California city in as much distress as Isleton, which has 817 residents, is $950,000 in the hole and is trying like crazy to stave off bankruptcy.
"Some people have said, 'Just hand it over to the county and go home,' " said City Manager Bruce Pope, who was hired in 2007 to help turn Isleton's fortunes around. "Sacramento County has its own deficit. They don't need our problems."
Not to mention that "disincorporation" is complicated and expensive. The last California city to pull the plug on itself is believed to have been Cabazon in Riverside County, about 1972. The process would cost Isleton about $250,000, and the government would still have to provide full services even as it breathed its last.
If Isleton had that kind of money, Pope noted, it wouldn't need to commit civic suicide. His city may be too poor to live, but it's also too poor to die.
Many of Isleton's miseries have been self-inflicted, but it's far from the only California city in difficult straits. Hard-luck Rio Vista, just across the Sacramento River, has consulted with bankruptcy attorneys but managed to cut its way to relative safety -- for now. Vallejo, 36 miles northwest, filed for bankruptcy protection in May.
Watsonville closed all city services except police and fire for two weeks over the holidays. Calexico declared a fiscal emergency last week.
The state's 10 biggest cities are more than a quarter-billion dollars in the red this fiscal year. Next year, San Francisco and Los Angeles predict a combined $1-billion deficit.
