Work crews remove debris a the site of a home destroyed by fires in the Coffey Park area of Santa Rosa, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017. Rumbling front loaders began scraping up the ash and rubble of nearly 9,000 destroyed homes and other structures in Northern California this week as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers launched a new phase of the largest wildfire clean-up in the state's history. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Santa Rosa is facing the harsh reality that the city will be forced to spend nearly 18-million in savings due to a post-fire budget crunch. City Manager Sean McGlynn delivered the dire economic news to the city council yesterday, warning the city is in danger of going broke if local and state governments are forced to spend 25 percent of fire debris removal costs. The total cost of removing debris from the deadly fires is estimated to be 750-million dollars. According to Santa Rosa’s new interim chief financial officer, the city had just over 37-million dollars in reserve at the start of 2018.