It seems appropriate that the Shoreacres City Council met tonight on the eve of the expected “federal government shutdown” caused by the Democrats refusal to eliminate waivers for Congress from the effects of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. Of course, the “federal government shutdown” isn’t really a shutdown but only a temporary closing of offices that the Democrats think will help their cause. But I digress.
This might be the strangest post I’ve ever written, which is saying a lot because I’ve written some really strange ones in 15+ years of doing this. If you’ve been following my posts on Shoreacres, you know that we are in a devil of a bind financially. Perhaps we can all point fingers but frankly, I can’t because I didn’t attend the council meetings in the past that got us to this point, so I’ll have to suck it up and absorb the impact of the current council’s decisions.
Here is the layout of the land. The current mayor, Matt Webber, was on the previous council and was appointed mayor by the current council after the previous mayor, Mayor Dolly Arons, resigned. She resigned graciously after the last round of elections, hoping that the city would come together to solve the problems, perceived or real. Unfortunately Mayor Matt Webber proposed an increase in a budget that was already in deficit territory. You’ll have to ask him why he did that – I did and his answer is online. The budget deficit he proposed was $846,342.15 out of a total combined budget of $2,787,072.17, or 30.4{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}.
Fortunately, council rejected his budget and scheduled a workshop for this evening. Unfortunately, I do not have a spreadsheet or actual budgeted numbers that resulted from this workshop. The rest of this report is in four phases: me as a taxpayer, me as an observer of politics, me as a voter/resident, and a hero award.
As a taxpayer
To say that I was disappointed in the cuts made is an understatement. Sort of like how I felt after Matt Schaub gave up yet another pick six on Sunday and seeing the Texans lose a game they should have won. The value of my home took a hit as council decided that it was more important to spend our savings account on daily activities than it was to cut spending or increase fees for water usage. If people that ran for elected office do not understand that putting Shoreacres in a financial hole hurts our property values, who does? After all, they live here too.
As an observer of politics
I knew that this was going to happen going in. In fact, in response to a couple of emails, I told people that this council was not going to address the hard issue, which is the increase in personnel costs the past six years. It was easy to see if you attended previous meetings. The Mayor couldn’t bring himself to address it and the council, with the singular exception of Alderman Nancy Schnell, followed his lead. The body language of the rest of the council was clear – we will not cut personnel. The only personnel cuts that I saw were not replacing positions that were budgeted but were empty. I’ve been observing various political bodies for an awful long time and I think that we got as much as we could have expected, given Mayor Matt Webber’s insistence on deficit spending.
As a voter
As I looked around at the members of council, I voted for all but two – and one of those was appointed. So I was very happy, as a voter, that the people that I voted for at least attempted to correct the problem. We’ll have to wait until Thursday for City Administrator Stall to put the new proposed budget online but I think the total reduction, from Mayor Webber’s proposed $846,342.15 deficit, will be $384,000, or a new proposed deficit of roughly $462,342, or 19{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the combined budget. Not good at all but much, much better than the Mayor’s proposal. Alderman Bo Bunker showed good leadership by presenting his reduced budget and his rationale behind it. He led the charge tonight. Good on him.
Nancy Schnell gets ‘Courageous’ award
Hey, I’ve criticized her in the past, I have to give her credit when she deserves it. I think that without her efforts, Mayor Webber’s almost a million in deficit spending for the year would have sailed through council. As it is, the deficit spending, as budgeted tonight, will be less than half a million. I consider that a huge victory for Shoreacres taxpayers and I applaud her for her efforts. She was roundly criticized in several emails and flyers for suggesting that personnel had to be cut to balance the budget. It is disconcerting that no one on council agreed with her but if you look at the severity of the problem, you cannot conclude anything other but that she is right about that. And I suspect that she will be able to convince other members on council about that in the long run. But for now, she did what she could and should be recognized for her efforts.
So there you go. Stall will type up the numbers and the council will present the “new” proposed deficit spending budget at the next council meeting, which I think is on October 14th. I don’t think that there is anything you or I can do to reduce it further, or convince the current Mayor and Council that it needs to be further reduced. The only thing you or I can do is show up, speak our minds, and then vote in the next round of elections. At least they put half a tourniquet on to stem the flow of spending.