Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Lafayette Budget Request
The Discussion over the speeding tickets as revenue generator topic grew into a larger budget debate, and I'm just starting this post to offer a clean beginning. The comment by Anonymousish about coming forward with a whole recipe not just one ingredient to grow the pie was clever. I know on the state level, aw, that's another topic. Anyway, what kind of bundling of budget items could be the "perfect world" scenario? Essentially, how to we rank spending priorities? Can a Council ever truly be expected to be that corporate-minded?
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Ok, fellow bloggers. What should I do here? Two of you who contribute are opponents of mine in the upcoming council elections, one an incumbent and one a challenger.
Now arguably I know more about the city finances than anyone outside of city hall. In fact, I have had to march done to city hall on a number of occassions to advise them not to shoot themselves in the foot. Ironically, the suggestions I gave them are now being implemented to get the budget axe from being really bloody this year. But the city is now scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Candidates are told that they can go to city hall and get their questions answered. Then can attend the budget workshops and get the same budget info the council gets.
Of course, consider the source and what the spin will be. So why should I provide the other more realistic view here?
For example read this DC article:
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/sep/11/center-to-draw-erie-citizens-back/
One of the bond issues is to expand our Rec Center.
Thoughts?
To answer your question, Kerry, I believe you should provide whatever information and insights you have because that's what you were elected to do.
Say what you will here about the fiscal prudence of the bonds, if you don't want the voters to have the chance to say "yes" to something because it is just that fiscally irresponsible, you should vote a nay on sending it to the ballot.
My understanding is that, for voters with high confidence in the council, the bonds are an opportunity to draw a "line of credit" and then determine what to actually spend later. I can appreciate that view, but is there ever enough discipline when budget time rolls around, to resist turning a positive vote into a mandate to spend?
Besides hiring traffic officers and who knows how many other collateral issues, the high profile budget issue that gets caught in the middle of all this is funding the traffic signal at Caria and Baseline (with installation of the signal at Dagny and 95th lurking in the background). If the bond fails, how will that be funded?
The citizens of Lafayette should be extremely wary of any plan to pay for routine service items with bonding.
Using long term debt to pay for routine services is just prolonging the pain to another day.
As for signalization, is there some secret plan in Lafayette to put a signal at every intersection? Dagny/95th? You're kidding, right? Why were the planning decisions of the past so poor that lights have to be placed within several hundred feet of each other?
D-B,
When Forest Park was being proposed, (I was a civilian.) several Indian Peaks residents went to the public hearing and said that intersection would become a main in and out to IP as well as the proposed development. The only way out to the north required going east to 287, no way to go west. We were ignored. (Trivia question - where did the name "Dagny" come from?).
Up until a few years ago, the Planning Commission included 2 council members. The chairman for some 15 years or more was allowed to dominate the decisionmaking. Development was welcomed to increase city revenue and rooftops. So we have what we have.
I presented two ways the two intersections could be funded to speed up the process. These were not new and had been done before. The city admin argued against it. Yes, it can be done without the bonding. Kind of ugly but it could be done. Frank and I got shot down.
As for the level of discipline, that depends on the council next year. Three incumbents are not up for reelection. And the next four months will determine the 2007 revenue results. I've told the city folks that if they don't get it right, they can explain to their spouses why there are no pay raises for a while.
The first city gov proposal was for $9M, including $1M for a park at Countryside. I know I pushed to get it lowered to the current repaving amount. But if the current revenue trend continues, that may be way too high as well. And D-B is correct in that we could be mortgaging the future again.
I don't disagree about the fundamental problem with borrowing from future revenues to pay for deferred maintenance, much less routine maintenance. It is an upside down financial situation.
The question is still what options exist to do otherwise, coming back always to finding savings or generating new revenue. When I looked at the two other options presented for council's consideration on the Caria signal funding, my impression was that this is not what was on the table. Option C won, and Option A and B essentially do the same thing, in that they borrow from future revenues. Those options just spend the money faster.
And, yes, if Caria gets funded, I fully expect that another neighborhood group will get organized to ask to finally fund the signal at Dagny. That's going to involve CDOT, so I hope they won't have their hopes up too high for a quick resolution.
Dagny Taggart, protagonist in Atlas Shrugged.
Borrowing from the Water Fund is from the existing millions of fund balance. It was done for the Rec Center and Golf Course. The Golf Course repayment was suspended for a couple of years and is now happening again.
The other alternate was to temporarily borrow from the $4M emergency reserve. Note it generates around $160,000 in interest which disappears into the GF each year. Interest alone would have repaid the $200,000 in a little more than a year.
What happen after the vote is the city disclosed the First Union repayments were $230,000+ ahead of schedule, being returned to Public Works. Of course we weren't told that until after the city admin scuttled the Caria/Baseline light. That $230,000 would have paid for the light and at least have let us order the poles and fixtures for 95th/Dagny as well. It takes six months for delivery.
So was the city admin being a) responsible, b) worried that he would need every penny in 2008, or c) resentful someone was treading on his turf?
Looking at the city YTD revenue may provide a hint.
Other options?
How about doing nothing. The choices have been made and the wallet is empty, right?
Explain to your constituents that the city had higher priorities such as giving money to the Latino club, throwing parties at the lake and downtown, building a dog park, entering the trash business, supporting a rec center, purchasing parcels of land, inventing creative ways to hamstring developers, recruiting the needy. By the time you got down to thinking about the petty things like road maintenance and traffic lights, the money was all gone.
Johnny spent his lunch money at the video arcade and now he's going to break out Dad's visa so he can eat? I don't think so. Not in my household.
Arguably, for sure.
Anon-ish, absolutely correct. But, you're asking a municipal government to be straight up with the voters. Might be a stretch.
Funding a park at Countryside without even knowing how it's going to be redeveloped is an absolute waste of money as well.
Am I alone in not seeing the need for a light at Dagny/95th? I sure don't see long lines of cars waiting to access 95th from either west, or east. Is this expense not so much a need, but a wish for those who might be a little inconvenienced once in awhile?
Doktorbombay,
You are not alone. In fact, I am not convinced of the need at Caria, though I must admit I don't hang out there much.
"you're asking a municipal government to be straight up with the voters"
Yes I am and I would love for this to be a ragin' issue in the election. For this, if nothing else, I appreciate Councilor Bensman.
I'd also like to see these issues highlighted during the election season. The "redevelopment plan" for the former Walmart/Albertsons site, what happened to the city budget that voters are being asked to approve loans for road maintenance, and why the city council is spending its time sending memos to Washington DC taking a stand on the immigration issue are all of concern.
For the budget, priorities should be basic services like clean water and operable sewer. I'd put road maintenance, snow removal, public safety in that group also. Then other functions common to city governments in the area like running the rec center and library. Then if there is left over money see if there are unmet needs in the community. That's not glamorous but it is functional.
Well, dear bloggers, if I continue to point out what decisions were made, who made them, and if I think the decisions were in error, Councilor Phillips says that it is "slandering" by their boss, inferring me. See my explanation on that comment since no city employee except the city administration is responsible to the city council. There are seven and I am only one of the seven. The city attorney is a contractor.
A number of the statements made earlier are not quite factually complete by other bloggers. A number are. So I don't quite know where to start.
The Walmart traffic study said signalization needed to be installed by early 2007 at Caria/Baseline. That study was submitted and accepted 3 years ago. The city had identified it as one of the most dangerous intersections back in 2001. But the decision then was made to allocate $5M for economic development and not put in the lights. Perhaps waiting for Baseline to get widened was the reason but the money could have been reserved. (One of the reasons the Thomas Open Space eventually happened. Video clips are available showing the problems. So ask why W*M wasn't asked to contribute to making this happen? The answer I got is hard to believe.)
At 95th/Dagny, people have died in accidents. Drivers, including me, play chicken daily to go across E and W. But the real danger is the only way for workers and visitors at Forrest Park and the major office park to get out and head south on 95th is by playing chicken and making left turns south. It is the most dangerous of the intersections in town not signalized.
As for the road repaving bond. The city has $5M tied up in the cheese guy deal, ACE, and the old Albertsons building. All non-liquid assests right now. So essentially what is going on is asking the taxpayers to allow the city to borrow that $5M which can't be touched plus interest. The proposal is to pay for it out of future sales tax revenues for 10 years. Now if anyone can project that that accurately, let me know.
Now of course is being slanderous?
Evidently requiring transparency and accountability to the taxpayers and electorate is considered by some to be just that.
As for some of the other stuff. It is called "fluff" by the city department heads. Yes, these very folks who I "slander" drop a few lines every once in a while. It takes up time and makes the council feel it is accomplishing something. The city folks don't like spending time and sitting through the meetings. But they like the fact that it keeps the council from its oversight duties and determining what really is going on.
I got a call from a resident today. I asked why call me? The answer, "You're the only one who seems to care on the council about the neighborhoods. Another resident told me to call you."
That's what makes it worthwhile today.
It is an interesting double standard, though, isn't it? First to criticize spending and first to want to spend. You should be pumping up Councilor Phillips for standing with you on that. Instead, the slightest suggestion that your logic might not hold water generates a flurry of hyperdefensive rhetoric. I'm sorry, is this slander?
It is true that Councilor Phillips voted with me to fund the Baseline/Caria traffic light and not wait for the vote on the bonding. I'm the one who got the city administrator to at least put the options on the table. To my knowledge, he had not read the WM traffic report which said it should have been done in early 2007.
Anon, if you view the facts as I know them and can document them as "hyperdefensive rhetoric", there is nothing more I can say. But then there is no wonder why city government fights transparency and develops an attitude of no accountability.
There is a difference between spending money to protect public safety and spending money on economic development deals. I'd like to think bloggers would understand the issue of asking voters now to borrow ahead for 10 years with an unpredictable revenue stream with their tax money for traffic mitigation and infrastructure repair to replace money spent on underperforming deals. If, Anon, you can't recognize the difference, there is nothing more I can say.
Kerry, I don’t recall the conclusion you are talking about concerning Caria at Baseline in the SuperWalMart traffic study. I am fact-checking this, but my recollection is that the improvements required for the store to receive a certificate of occupancy were exactly as recommended by the traffic study, meaning that there was no requirement for a traffic signal as a result of that development.
The problem movement at that intersection is northbound Caria to westbound Baseline. I don’t think there is much disagreement that something needs to be done to make that problem movement and the intersection in general work better, but I don’t believe it is correct to say that the SuperWalMart report stipulated any particular timing for the signal. If the Caria signal is warranted by traffic volumes, which it may be, there is still the possibility that other improvements elsewhere in the City – say a signal at Dagny – are warranted by safety concerns. Does a volume warrant trump a safety warrant?
Unfortunately, some worthy constituency in the City is eventually going to have to wait for needed attention to the roadway system. Add to that funding other public safety improvements, like a satellite fire station and additional personnel. What is public safety issue number one? How do we rank numbers two, three, four, on down the line?
Is it fair to characterize the problem as funding public safety versus economic development? If the City had spent zero on the South Boulder Road situation, instead of the millions that are sunk right now, there would be calls to spend more money on this. And, despite the millions spent, there still are. There are plenty of people out there who understand that funding priorities are not a simple matter of assigning something a "public safety" label or not. I believe people anywhere in the City could respect a council that stood behind a rational list of critical funding needs.
The best creativity we’ve had applied to funding problems to date are a variety of tried and true ways of pushing off budget consequences into the future. Perhaps Caria Options A and B would avoid the bond (Option C) and show the City’s empty pockets, which is probably the only chance for any new property tax to look favorable to voters in the foreseeable future. And Options A and B might have pushed the City to find efficiencies in the budget and avoid all of this. But I still see Option A and B spending money, and spending money in ways that just end up creating a hole for the City to fill with future revenue. Timing, not budget reform, was the primary benefit of those options that I can see.
So is anyone willing to talk about whether the City’s financial structure is afloat or upside down? How much freeboard, if any, is there to tackle needed projects? It seems to me that there is every reason for City leaders to collaborate on some honest assessment of that question. How much would one-time infusions of cash (e.g., getting out of eco devo deals, elusive but alluded-to cash from the NW Parkway lease) do to change the situation?
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