The San Francisco suburb of Moraga seems as far as one could get from the financial pressures that have battered big cities like Detroit or Chicago. But on June 28, the 17,000-resident town authorized a declaration of fiscal emergency, a step California cities can take before bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. In this case, it gives officials in the affluent enclave the power to expedite a referendum on new fees to boost its revenue, which has been restrained by a lackluster retail base and property-tax limits the state enacted almost 40 years ago. “We just don’t have enough revenue to take us through the future for many more years before we would really be in some of the situations other cities are, where they’re laying off mass numbers of employees or declaring bankruptcy,” town manager Robert Priebe said.
