They found the money.

The Santa Barbara City Council decided to take $500,000 out if its contingency reserve funds to extend library hours, save an after-school program at Monroe Elementary, and protect other programs.

Although Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon has suggested using Measure C sales tax funds to fund the programs, the council opted to not go in that direction, and to use reserve funds instead.

“I do support wholeheartedly taking this from reserves,” Councilwoman Meagan Harmon said. “While I am very supportive of taking this action today, I do think we are missing the forest through the trees. If we are going to be using reserve dollars, we need to have a holistic conversation about what that means.”

Harmon in a special meeting on Monday suggested lowering the city’s overall reserve policy. The city has a 15% disaster reserve fund, and 10% contingency fund. Harmon proposed dipping into the contingency reserves by 2% to 5%.

A full house of about 100 people packed the City Council chamber Wednesday night for the near four-hour-long meeting. Wednesday’s budget vote marked the informal end to a budget season that drew headlines over the city staff’s budget projections and proposed cuts to key programs in the community.

The council and city staff used an interactive budget tool Wednesday to go back and forth on funding for various projects. The staff will pull everything together for a final budget vote next week.

Among the more significant decisions on Wednesday was the council decision to spend $600,000 to open up libraries more days of the week.

Under pressure from library activists, the council agreed to restore funding to the downtown and Eastside Santa Barbara public libraries. Right now, they are open five and six days a week, respectively, and will move to six and seven days a week.

“There’s nothing left to cut but more people and books,” said Lauren Trujillo, director of the Santa Barbara Public Library Foundation. “That’s what the library is about; it’s more than books, it’s about the people.”

She noted that the library funding was cut during the pandemic.

“We have to find a solution,” Trujillo said. “Now is not the time to cut, but to restore and save the library from crisis.”

The council also agreed to raise downtown parking rates from $2.50 to $3 an hour — a year after the city raised it from $1.50 to $2.50. It dropped a proposal to reduce the free time from 75 minutes to 60 minutes.

A majority of the council, however, voted against restoring funding for two police office positions and a sergeant.

In addition, the council voted to save an after-school program at Monroe Elementary School.

Parks and Recreation Director Jill Zachary had proposed cutting the program, which serves a school of about 70% Latino students. She suggested that students could go to Washington Elementary for an after-school program, or that they could use a similar school district-funded program.

Sneddon emerged as the city’s most pivotal player in the budget discussions. She challenged city staff and City Administrator Rebecca Bjork and questioned if their projections were too conservative. She also said Bjork was being too blunt with her across-the-board proposed cuts of 5%.

She made it clear that she was not questioning the ethics of the staff, but that a more “tactical” approach was necessary.

“I believe there will be additional revenue beyond the draft budget’s conservative estimates,” Sneddon said. “The proposed adjustments to the recommended budget reflect the values that serve our workers and our residents for a safe and clean city, and support education, childcare, parks, arts, access to information and opportunity, addresses homelessness and hopefully boosts the morale of the workforce.”

In one of the surprise moments of the night, former councilman and planning commissioner Harwood “Bendy” White spoke at the meeting and brought an air of optimism.

“You are going to get conservative numbers out of your finance director,” White said. “It is going to be your job, however, to counterbalance that, and sometimes, just a plain-old pushback.”

White said unemployment levels are at low levels, the debt ceiling debate has been addressed, and local tax revenues are recovering.

“This community is going to fly very soon,” White said. “The sun is going to come out in July, I promise. “