The event, hosted by the League of Women Voters of Southwest Santa Clara Valley, was intended to educate the community about where managers' time goes and how taxpayers' money is spent.

The managers, which included Debra Figone of Los Gatos, Dan Rich of Campbell, Dave Anderson of Saratoga and David Knapp of Cupertino, dissected their city and town finances with use of pie charts, graphs and plenty of numbers. The managers examined such things as services provided, number of employees, total budget, budget per capita and sales and property taxes.

"This is an unending series of pie graphs," joked Knapp of Cupertino, who moderated the panel at the Campbell Community Center. "That's why I decided to go first—so you wouldn't be as bored."

Though the presentation went on for two hours, the generally attentive crowd later asked such questions as why employees are laid off if there is plenty of money in the general fund, why some cities have higher sales and property taxes than others and how affordable housing is accounted for in the budgets.

Shiloh Ballard, who works for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a San Jose nonprofit organization, said that she attended the meeting to learn more about how the budgets affect low-income housing.

"Local government finance is huge to the equation," she said.

Los Gatos director of finance and administrative services, Stephen Conway, also attended the meeting. He said he was surprised to hear some of the statistics from the other cities.

"Even as a finance director, it was very interesting to see the differences among cities," he said. One of those differences is how the cities and town differed in property taxes. Saratoga homeowners pay one of the lowest property taxes in the state, at 4.4 percent, while Los Gatans pay 9.5 percent. These taxes, however, do not provide enough money to fully support the services the city and town provide, so the revenue needs to be made elsewhere.

Saratoga does not have such services as a redevelopment agency, library or its own police department—it contracts with the county. Los Gatos, which has its own police department, accounts for 40 percent of the town's expenditures. Unlike Saratoga, which is a "no frills" city, in 2004-05 Los Gatos received almost $8 million in revenue of sales tax from merchants.

In Saratoga, however, sales tax revenue is on the decline.

"Our sales tax is still shrinking, for the fifth year in a row," Anderson said. "Other cities are continuing to increase." Saratoga used to receive more than $1 million from sales tax, but now that number is at $700,000, Anderson said.

Last quarter, Los Gatos received 20 percent of those funds from one business alone: Netflix. Figone said that the car dealerships also provide substantial sales tax revenue.

Although each municipality has its own budget, strategies and problems, one trend stood out—all of them were affected by the economic crisis of 2001. Because of that downfall, the cities and town tried to compensate by laying off employees, cutting services and partnering with other cities.

Despite covering complex issues, Bena Chang, who attended the panel, said she now has a better understanding of the local budget issues.

"They all did a great job," Chang said.