A fiscally strong Lemon Grove to start long-awaited infrastructure upgrades

Lemon Grove is finally moving forward with long-delayed improvements after years of financial strain.

This is made possible by a one-cent sales tax hike that the East County city’s voters approved in a landslide in 2024. Many viewed the proposal as necessary to fund overdue repairs to roads, sidewalks and storm drains.

“I think the residents were ready to invest in themselves,” Lemon Grove Mayor Alysson Snow said.

In the city’s current budget, $5.3 million of sales tax-generated funds was allocated to the project, which will improve maintenance of the city’s 70 miles of streets, with $2 million focused on repaving and repairing streets.

An additional $750,000 is going to be used to upgrade sidewalks and storm drains. The city faced a surge of sinkholes due to 50-year-old underground storm drain pipes after a heavy rain season in 2024.

Snow said the effort also aims to enhance walkability and improve safety surrounding Lemon Grove’s schools.

City staff recently began assessing potential sidewalks to repair in the first phase of the program during a City Council meeting on Nov. 18.

The council considered seven proposed repair sites: North Avenue from Olive Street to Buena Vista Avenue; Lincoln Street from Kempf Street to Washington Street; San Miguel from MacArthur to Jaynia Place; Mount Vernon Street west of Massachusetts Avenue; Bakersfield Street and Taft Street; Madison Avenue and Roosevelt Avenue; and Roy Street, Baldwin Road and Darryl Street.

Once project areas are finalized, city staff will survey the sites and prepare designs. Construction is expected to begin in early spring of 2026, City Manager Lydia Romero said.

Though the revitalization project is still in its early stages, Romero said some of the funding has already been spent on upgrades for city vehicles.

“We’re only six months into it, our tax didn’t start until July, so we are still collecting it and just starting to spend that money,” Romero said. “We have a huge backlog on all of those particular items (storm drain, road and sidewalk repairs), and we want to make sure we do some very good inroads to use these one-time monies to do these one-time repairs.”

An additional $557,000 of the tax revenue will be spent to pilot the Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving program, which encourages law enforcement and the community to work collaboratively to prevent crime.

A portion of the funds was also put toward a gift card program that gives money back to cardholders to spend at participating businesses within Lemon Grove.

This is part of a larger effort to maintain traffic to local businesses, a trend that was jumpstarted during the pandemic and has played a key part in the city’s newfound financial stability, Romero said.

Lemon Grove has faced budget issues for decades. In recent years, however, the city has made steady progress toward financial stability. For the second year in a row, the budget is balanced with no deficit, allowing the city to invest in long-overdue infrastructure projects.

Revenue from the tax increase, which raised sales tax in Lemon Grove from 7.75% to 8.75%, provided a cushion to the city’s budget by allowing for new spending while maintaining a balanced budget for another year.

The city was able to reach this point, in part, due to careful planning and spending, Romero said.

“It took a lot of strength, really, and a lot of hard work by previous city councils and elected officials,” Romero said. “It took toeing the line and understanding how to allocate our funds for the greatest need, to really balance want versus need, and to have that fiscal discipline that is needed.”

With a newly balanced budget, the city is now working to rebuild its reserves after pulling from the fund in previous years. The current fiscal year’s budget transferred $1.6 million to the general reserve fund from the city’s fiscal year 2023-2024 surplus.

This comes in stark contrast to previous years — city officials once feared a $1.9 million deficit during the COVID-19 health emergency.

To move past its long history of fiscal challenges, Romero said city staff had to shift their focus toward sustainable spending practices.

The new sales tax combined with property taxes and a recent surge in local spending has bolstered the city’s financial recovery, she said. Tax revenues make up over 73% of the city’s expected revenue for the coming year.

With new money to spend, Lemon Grove is prioritizing its spending on public safety; $14.5 million of the general fund is being put toward law enforcement and fire services.