The Common Council budget has recently become the center of the little city hall controversy.
Yes, someone made a serious blunder in not informing staff that their position had been proposed to be cut to 70% and Mark Clear was sensible enough to apologize, but the others didn’t.
And yes, the fact that the Common Council Organizational Committee didn’t see the budget before it got turned in to the Mayor was another serious blunder. And even those who are defending that blunder admit that for at least the last 5 years that has been the process, its just not in writing. It is the process I remember for the past 7 years and Verveer says that is the process he remembered for the past 13 years.
But, that’s not what I want to talk about. All this controversy made me take a look at what has happened to several budgets over the last 10 years. Here’s what I found:
MAYOR’S OFFICE
1998 $713,052
2008 $1,211,283
That is a $498,231 increase or 70%
PARKS
1998 $9,006,199
2008 $14,460,881
That is a $5,454,682 increase or 61%
ENGINEERING
1998 $2,446,107
2008 $3,555,984
That is a $1,409,877 increase or 58%
POLICE
1998 $35,197,123
2008 $54,469,458
That is a $19,372,335 increase or 55%
COMPTROLLER
1998 $1,952,906
2008 $2,716,810
That is a $763,904 increase of 39%
STREETS
1998 15,687,330
2008 20,966,443
That is 5,279,113 increase or 34%
COUNCIL
1998 281,152
2008 351,499
That is a 70,347 increase or 25%
HUMAN RESOURCES
1998 $1,526,682
2008 $1,869,300
That is a 342,618 increase or 22%
This list is sort of random, I didn’t look at all of the budgets because there were mergers and sections of departments reorganized and it wasn’t apples to apples, but I think it is for all of the above. Tho I’m thinking that maybe the parks department inherited some activities from another department. And I can’t figure out why Human Resources is low as well. For the Common Council budget and Human Resources, that is less than a 3% increase each year, which doesn’t keep up with inflation.
Additionally, the Council has been talking about adding staff to our office but we didn’t have money in the budget last year. So, instead we had an intern that did some research for us.
Also, we have only $600 each year to mail to our constituents, which prevents us from having more community meetings unless we use the $600 account that we have for going to seminars, ordering office supplies, paying phone bills, renting rooms for our meetings (it costs me $80 to have a meeting at Gates of Heaven), etc. My mailing account is so insufficient for a densely populated district because mailing to just a few blocks quickly eats up all the postage, even if you use postcards instead of letters and use bulk mail. So, I usually try not to spend the money in case some emergency comes up, and then end up not spending it. It’s also why I set up my own listserves for the neighborhoods and use my blog instead of doing a newsletter. I also save much of my $600 account in case I go over in my mailing account and have to use that account for mailings. I pay my own phone bills, mostly buy my own office supplies and don’t go to many trainings or seminars and I most certainly don’t buy Frostiball tickets with it!
My point is, the council provides very little for us alders. We have 2 staff people for 20 alders, we only get paid around $7,000 a year and we have $1200 to spend on our expenses and for mailings. There really is nothing left to cut. And while we have only taken inflationary increases over the years, the Mayor’s Office has had a 70% increase in their budget in the last 10 years. Any more cuts to our budget will make us totally ineffective and unable to communicate with our constituents. It’s a tough budget year, but we’re going to have to find some place else to cut!
