STAR has criticized the SacRT FY-2026 (July 2025 to June 2026) ‘abridged’ budget as missing critical information that the SacRT board, the public, and transit advocacy organizations need to analyze SacRT operations and capital, and provide input to the budget.

It turns out that important information we noticed was missed was in fact available and was in the staff presentation at the May 12 board meeting, which we did not have available before the meeting. See SacRT budget document fluff, and staff report, SacRT FY 2026 operating budget revenue, SacRT FY 2026 operating budget expenses, and other posts).

We have now realized that the problem is the very idea of an ‘abridged’ budget. The simplification of operating revenues and expenses into very broad categories serves no one, not the board, not the public, and not transit advocacy. STAR therefore asks the the ‘abridged’ concept be dropped. Instead, there should be one or more preliminary or draft (either term is acceptable) budgets. These budgets would contain all the budget information that will be in the final budget for the upcoming fiscal year, recognizing that each revision may have updated data or even text. These would not need to include all the non-budget information. The FY-2025 final budget contains many pages of non-budget information, which may be included in the final but does not need to be included in the preliminary.

STAR recognizes that formatting preliminary documents is very time intensive (it is true of ours as well), so we would not expect a highly formatted preliminary, just a document formatted well enough that it is readable. The formatting effort can be spent on the final. There is no reason to spend staff time developing a document, such as the ‘abridged’ budget, which is not useful to anyone. Make great use of staff time by skipping the ‘abridged’.

We suggest that each draft include a single-page summary of the budget, up front before any other information, that provides the disclaimer that this is a preliminary budget that will be revised, the dates of expected revisions and public hearings, and a summary of the major issues or findings in the budget. No more than one page. This is the ‘executive summary’ page.

• SacRT Budget