Quite honestly, I don’t even want to write about this one. All I’m doing is making enemies of these guys when all they are doing is trying to do what they think is the right thing for the city. But I started down this road when I committed to attend every council meeting this year, so it’s too late to stop now. I simply do not understand how or why they think that spending substantially more money than the city is taking in is good public policy. It isn’t personal, I don’t even know these guys on a social basis. But nonetheless, I’ve become enemy number one for a couple of them. And now my wife wants to move before potential home buyers and real estate agents figure out what a bind the city is in financially. Are you sure you want to be a political blogger?
Additional Capital Spending
If you look at the agenda for the meeting, the first item was discussion approving an ordinance allowing the mayor to execute a contract with a low bidder for $110k to install a new water line. I’ve no idea if it is legal or not to vote on a spending ordinance at a meeting where no public comment is allowed but it seems odd. Regardless, after a lengthy discussion, they voted unanimously for it. The council members were clearly frustrated that Stall sprung this on them when there was no mention of it in previous budget meetings. Stall said that was because it was a “rollover” project and pointed out that if they looked at the projected spending in that account by year end (September 30, 2013), there was an amount listed as $125k which was for this project. That explanation doesn’t pass the smell test – the last budget workshop was September 30th at 6 pm – clearly Stall knew that project didn’t happen and should have brought it up.
The $110k turned into $121k with a 10{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} contingency added. Interestingly, the city engineer, who was present, recommended going with the low bidder on the project even though he pointed out, under questioning, that the company is a new LLC and the letters of recommendation came from relatives. The city engineer relied on his conversations with the principles of the company, telling council that they knew what they were doing and had 27 years experience in the business.
Budget workshop
Alderman Schnell asked for the meeting so it was up to her to provide specific cuts. The other council members said that they were satisfied with the cuts they had done at t he September 30th meeting. Schnell offered several suggestions, including personnel cuts, but clearly the council wasn’t interested. The only thing that she was able to achieve was eliminating the 2{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} Cost of Living Adjustments, which Stall calculated to be $16,562 total across all departments.
Alderman Steve Jones, who had in previous meetings voiced opposition to deficit spending, went the other way this round. He asked Stall about the reserve fund and Stall advised that it was almost one million dollars. Jones then asked about how much we needed to survive three to six months, and Stall said $600k. After that, Jones focused on keeping $600k in the fund and was willing to spend down the fund to that level, as long as the spending is “smart” and not like it was “before”. He also said that we needed to start saving money in anticipation of replacing the city’s water tower.
The council took $4,900 from their allotted $10,000 for paving the public works parking lot and added it to the police budget to purchase software. There was no net increase or decrease on this exchange.
During the discussion about the Utility Fund, council decided to raise the water/sewer rate by 5{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} after Stall urged them to, saying that the rate was due to be raised before Hurricane Ike. He estimated that this hike would result in an average bill being raised $3.35 per month, to which Alderman Mike Wheeler said, “they won’t even notice it on their bill”. The hike was agreed to unanimously but must be presented at a regular council meeting for a vote.
Net effects of the meeting
I’m not going to try and recreate a budget from last night’s meeting. I’ve already spent far more time on this as a citizen that I should have, especially when the majority of citizens don’t seem to care – only one other citizen was at the meeting last night with me. But I will recap what they did:
Commentary
The surprise $121k water line had to be funded, as does the water line that was already budgeted for $75k. No two ways around it. Public safety must be addressed. The problem is that four members of council seem to think that the welfare of the employees of the city comes before the solvency of the city and refuse to even consider eliminating positions or bringing salaries in line with the average rates in our region. There is nothing that can be done to correct the over-spending if they continue with this mindset. At the current rate of over-spending, we will have eliminated our reserve fund in a year and a half. As Alderman Schnell stated, there is no magic property tax fairy that is going to swoop in and save the day. Our property tax rate would have to be raised roughly 175{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} to cover the spending that council is proposing.
Citizen Input
If you’ve been reading these posts on Shoreacres, you will note that two citizens, Ron Hoskins and Gerry Victor, have put out caution flags on spending and have suggested ways to get the spending in control. Obviously these two men have more expertise than I do regarding the Shoreacres budget. Here are a couple of charts that I created from data in Hoskins’ comments:
As Hoskins demonstrates, personnel costs have risen dramatically in the past six years. He also took the time to develop his own proposed budget – like mine, he didn’t quite make it to balanced but came very close:
Ron Hoskins’ Proposed Shoreacres Budget 2013-2014
Unfortunately, Ron’s work, along with Gerry’s, Nancy’s, and mine is for naught. The proposed budget as revised by council will be presented to citizens on Monday, 10-14, at the regularly scheduled council meeting and voted into law. You can’t say we didn’t try.