Last night we had a council meeting to hear about . . . drum roll please . . . THE WORST BUDGET YEAR EVER. Sigh . . . where have we heard that before? It’s the boy who called wolf. Every year this is going to be the worst budget year ever. Every year a miracle happens and the Mayor gets to be the hero. This year, when things are bad, his cries of wolf are hard to hear. It’s hard to know exactly how bad it is with the preliminary numbers we have. And, its hard to listen to, because its our own damn fault. If you nearly quadruple your borrowing and give the police everything that they want for 6 years, there’s going to be consequences. In 2002 we had a $95M Capital Budget with G.O. Borrowing of $26M. 6 years later, in 2008 we had a $160M Capital Budget with G.O. Borrowing of $95M. That’s right, 6 years ago we borrowed $26M, in 2008 we authorized borrowing $95M. And the rule of thumb is that for every $1M we borrow, we need $140,000 per year to pay principle and interest. The police budget in 2002 was $39M and now it is $54.5M in 2008 and projected to be $55.6M in 2009 out of a projected $244M budget.
Before I get into the numbers and the insane statement by the mayor, let me say a few things about last night’s council meeting and quorum.
- Quorum for council is 14 (by ordinance). Last night we started the meeting at 5:00 with Sanborn (excused), Cnare, Brandon, Palm and Compton missing. (quorum +1)
- Compton showed up a half hour late. (quorum +2)
- Gruber left at 6:00. (quorum +1)
- Kerr left at 6:15. (quorum)
- Solomon, couldn’t leave to go to the public hearing for Office of Community Services budget because we would lose quorum.
- Dean Brasser spent about 1 hour briefing us on the numbers.
- The mayor spoke for about 10 minutes.
- We had lots of questions and issues to discuss, but had to let Brian go to his meeting so adjourned due to lack of quorum around 6:30.
So, here are the big scary numbers.
- They figured 1% inflation for all the departments and then added money for opening a fire station +$1M), not making police (+$550,000) or fire (+$193,500) make any cuts, subtracted election year costs for the clerks office (-$174,034), gave the Overture 4% increase (+68,807), added money to streets for increase in costs for blacktop and salt (+$155,000), fuel for the buses ($1M), fuel for the rest of the cities vehicles (+$716,400), added money for a full year of the position for the Economic Development Unit Director (+$60,000), added money for a full year of the position of the Community Development Unit Director (+$60,000) and the library had an increase (+$831,212) for Sequoya and compensation and something else I didn’t quite understand. With all of that, our budget ends up being about $244M as opposed to $224M in 2008. That’s a $20M increase.
- Our expenses are increasing by 8.67%. ($20M)
- Our revenues are going down by 6.67% ($4.6M)
- That adds 15.79% to the levy ($24M)
- That’s $186.89 more on the average $247,974 house.
- It’s a 10.37% increase making the taxes $1,988 on the average $247,974 hours.
However, the state imposes various restrictions on us and so we can’t really do that. Our estimates at the moment say the following:
- We have to cut $1,799,085 to meet the requirements of the Expenditure Restraint Program. If we don’t hit that target, we lose $5.5M in State aids.
- We have to cut or find other sources of revenue to keep within our levy limits imposed by the state. The amount we have to cut or find other sources of funding for is $6.9M
So, it looks grim. It always looks grim this time of the year. And we have tools and tricks we can use to get these numbers down. There’s the $30M+ rainy day fund, the transient occupancy tax funds, raising fines and forfeitures and other cost shifting measures we can use. So, it remains to be seen how horrible it is.
Now, for the absurdity of the evening. As quorum was dropping, the Mayor spoke to us and asked us to look for cuts in the areas that we support. So, if we support police, we should cut in the police department. If we support community services, we should find cuts in community services. If we support economic development, we should look for cuts in economic development.
Then . . . here it comes . . . he made the grand gesture of . . . cutting what many of us called the “Mayor’s slush fund” until we put a process to his slush fund (Emerging Neighborhoods Fund). That process crashed and burned at one of our last council meetings. Anyways, to prove his point, he offered to cut 75% of the program that he described as “nothing more personal” to him. That program that is sinking faster than the titanic. He’s offering to cut $150,000 of the $200,000. Well, I’ve got a cut for community services, since I’m an advocate for it. Cut the other $50,000!
There you have it folks. All the scary news you can handle. Now, we try to sort out what the reality of this all is.
