As I write this the Lafayette City Council may be approving a recycling contract with a trash hauler and would have brainstormed the idea of putting a bond issue on the November ballot to fund various city projects and the Rec Center. I hope the recycling contract gets approved and the multi-issue bond funding idea deserves healthy skepticism. Unless you consider this to be a type of "growth paying its own way" scheme - that is, tapping current sales tax to pay what amounts to credit card bills to run a city's current demands. Street repairs may be worthwhile, but a park and rec center improvements appear to be indulgences.
To Councilor Cameron's point, what would I do to fix the issue? Increase user fees at the rec center to accurately reflect the cost of the service. Lay out trade-offs of other city amenities with a new park as an option in lieu of another amenity. Have Council decide and take blame/credit as it may be (or bump it to the voters like the annexation issue). Road repairs are like a special assessment; in this case a bond issue for them may be the best way to pay.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Congrats on the monopoly, Western.
Coming soon, I'll be paying more for trash and $1 recycling service I don't need. Honestly.
I recycle at Eco-Cycle's drop point in Louisville. Lafayette helps to subsidize the drop-point. The City doesn't like me going there.
Whatever.
Well now you don't have to drive. Just throw it in your front yard and someone else will sort and recycle for you. I do hope this incourages some of my neighbors to recycle, but I doubt it. It's really hard to seperate the containers and paper. If you're worried about $1, it sounds like you didn't see the number of commas needed for the cost of the bonding issues.
I am all for a new family changing area at the Rec Center. Do you know how uncomfortable it is for a father to take his daughter to the Rec Center? No girl should ever be subjected to old men in locker rooms. Once they are old enough to go into the ladies locker room by themselves it's OK, but until then it's an uncomfortable situation for all, and a big disincentive to use the Rec Center. Does it cost half a million dollars? I don't know, but that's a lot less expensive than road improvements, and I'm all for road improvements, too.
Just a few comments on the bond issue from last night. I haven't come to a final conclusion myself, but did believe that the idea deserved further exploration. It is a complex issue, not to be solved in an initial 90 minute discussion. There are things that will HAVE TO be paid for -- road repairs (and remember from a few months ago that completely fixing Lafayette's roads is estimated to cost closer to $32M, the proposed bond would only put $5M toward them), parking lot repairs, traffic signals, and cemetery irrigation. The money has to come from somewhere.
At a very basic level, we are looking at decreasing the up front cost of these items by paying for them in today's dollars, rather than doing, say $400,000 of improvements a year and probably getting less for the money.
But there are risks (as always, with either decision) and we need to consider them further before we ask the voters to approve a bond (this would be required).
What was clear last night is that Lafayette is always going to be financially "lean." It is only a question of whether we are slender or emaciated.
What puzzles me is that the link between Item R and the bonding workshop is not even on the radar screen.
Yes, the money to pay for capital projects has to come from somewhere. I'm not necessarily opposed to this bond idea, because I haven't seen any cost details, but a bond is conjuring up money using a financial vehicle. There is no more money than before, and I would contend that the cost of financing and debt service is going to discount any savings in today's dollars, to the tune of quite a bit of inflation.
But that's neither here nor there. What has not been fully vetted in my opinion is the role of the capital funds that are now slated to be accounted for only in the General Fund. These are, after all, funds that were set up to generate money for capital projects. Rather than asking if there is anything we might do to make more use of impact fees and exactions, the existing funds have been written off as significant contributors to capital funding.
That makes sense if we are truly at a point where construction is done and new revenue sources for all capital expenditures will have to be identified. But we are putting the cart WAY before the horse to pool those funds with the General Fund when they still have the potential to generate enough funding to pay for a significant portion of public projects now being targeted.
In the end, maybe I'm making a big big to-do over accounting, and not something that would ever be seriously looked at as part of the fiscal policy of the City. Nonetheless, if anyone thinks that PRAD is something to sneeze at, run the numbers on what it might generate to build-out. And if someone thinks the Service Expansion Fee has been inconsequential because it doesn't have the ability to raise a lot of money, ask yourself why a fund that is supposed to pay for public safety facilities and on the books since 1974 has been barely a factor in paying for the new police station and getting a fire precinct off the ground.
I'm not convinced that ignoring the potential of special funds is ever a good answer when a city is trying to raise revenue, even when that City is perhaps starting to see the end of its horizontal growth.
Couldn't resist checking in after the workshop Tuesday night.
Alex, the accounting changes don't effect how the funds are used and the limitations on their usage. Contact the acting finance director for an explanation, which I did before the meeting.
As for the Rec changing room, there are three different ways I have come up with so far for it to be funded and the project begun this year without a need for the voter permission to bond. The money is already there. There may be a fourth but I haven't thought that one through yet. None of these are tied to the revenue "forecast".
I don't know if the city admin did not explore these possibilites or chose not to. If I was finance director for a day or two, the money could be found with no cuts and no hardship to any department.
There were a number of inconsistent and contradictory messages presented by the staff at the workshop. The ghost of our former finance director was in the room. No need to go there now.
As is often the case, what is presented in public is not the entire story. Sometimes it can be very misleading.
See you folks in a while.
P.S.
The redevelopment project of the Old Albertsons/WM site is slowly grinding to a halt. In addition, two businesses own their own pads which sit in the middle of the proposed park. Also that proposed park is in the Urban Renewal District and if the gridlock ever gets broken, that's the way it should be dealt with.
The Rec Center is feeling the pressure of the competition, especially from new private businesses, the Y, and the new Erie center. Raising fees could actually reduce revenue to the point of requiring more subsidies. Two years ago the council required the city to add services that could be charged for, which appears to be working right now. Lots of work has to be done on the Rec Center financial plan to see what can be done.
The road repair issue can be traced back to the city decision back in 2001 as to how to allocate the General Fund surplus of some $11M resulting from the major residential growth spurt in the early and mid '90s. $2.5M was allocated to road repair. $5M was allocated to economic development. It could have been the other way around. The argument that fixing roads back then (I think the need was for $16M or so) because it would cost less was lost in the shuffle. I was a spectator back then.
The $5M is tied up in three existing development agreements. The city staff led the charge on all three and convinced the council the deals were needed. So the proposed $5M bonding is actually a way to get money now because the other $5M is not accessible. It was not presented this way Tuesday night because of the heartburn it would have caused.
Once again, what is said in public is often not the entire or "real" story. If some of you wonder why I have become the resident curmudgeon, that's why.
That is some comfort, to know that the recommendation to have the City Attorney "dissolve" the capital projects funds will not result in Code changes. I hope that is correct.
I still have two questions, though:
1. Why consolidate the existing capital project funds with the General Fund? Is this connected with the bond proposal (say, to simplify the structure of that debt), or is there some other motivation? It seems helpful to me to see how much each of these revenue sources is bringing in, by accounting for them separately.
2. Where is the City at in terms of assessing revenue sources? It strikes me that the Service Expansion Fee is probably just one example of a fund that is not taking in the amount necessary to fulfill its purpose. Talk all we want about where and how the City needs to spend money, it would be better to have some assurance that the premise of this discussion is using debt at little as possible.
And a final comment: The decision to fund huge real estate purchases with money that could have gone to roads is certainly one that we can question in retrospect. However, I think the crux of the present situation is how to finally fund the same needed budget items and not flush the value of the City’s assets on South Boulder Road down the drain. This is why I ask about bonding to get South Boulder Road built to Broomfield. That would probably increase the total bond, but if we are really talking about taking a look at capital improvements that the City needs and will benefit from, you have to start somewhere. Letting South Boulder Road languish as punishment for the brand of wishful thinking that seems to persist is not constructive; rather, we should identify some steps to make that wishful thinking more realistic, the City is already committed to the tune of $5M, as we all know...
A family change room is a good idea but going into debt to build it is not. The city needs to squeeze the turnip on that one. I'm open to hearing why the city might need to bond for streets and maybe traffic signals and cemetery water so convince me if you care to.
Based on Council's reaction I would guess that the street repair portion of this idea is a no-brainer. As for Dan's ideas on raising fees at the rec center, thats a non-starter. We recently raised some of the fees. I do not believe the Rec center should be run totally as a self sustaining enterprise. It is a community asset and will always require some subsidy to ensure that all of the community can enjoy it.
Council took many steps to encourage the Rec Center to be more competitive and draw more users through better programs, and the current director is doing a fantastic job of it. In previous years, due to an ordinance that has been repealed, the rec center was actually encouraged to lose money, with subsidies between 20 to 40%. Currently it is under 20%.
Post a Comment