Mayor Paul Soglin puts out his capital budget targets with an eye towards how much money we have to spend in the operating budget to pay back our capital spending spree we’ve been on.
From: Veldran, Lisa
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 12:16 PM
To: ALL ALDERS
Subject: Mayor’s Memo: 2012 Capital Budget Targets & 2012 Capital Budget Calendar
Alders,
Please find attached the following documents that were distributed at today’s Department/Division Head meeting:
1. Mayor Soglin’s budget memo entitled, “2012 Capital Budget Targets” that was distributed at the Department/Division Head meeting this morning.
May 17, 2011
TO: Department and Division Heads
FR: Mayor Paul R. Soglin
RE: 2012 Capital Budget TargetsAs City agencies prepared capital budgets the last two years, we faced a deep national recession and the accompanying drops in tax revenues and fees. This year, in addition to the sluggish economy, we face unprecedented cuts in our state revenues. The Finance Department is monitoring the progress of the state budget and its impact on Madison, especially the operating budget. But we must be mindful of this impact as we begin work on the 2012 Capital Budget.
There is a primary goal to guide us during this process.We must reduce the ratio of debt service to total general fund expenditures to the City’s historical target of 12.5%.
In addition, we need to maintain our infrastructure, we need to stay on track with the annual replacement of aging vehicles in the city fleet, we need to increase energy efficiency, and we must protect our environment.Finally, we will be more creative in how we do business. Whenever possible, we should look for more ways to partner with Dane County and with surrounding communities.
In setting targets for individual agencies, you should look at the Capital Improvement Plan. Your target will be 80% of the amount shown in the plan for 2012. Then, items that cannot be included in your 2012 capital budget request should be shown in your request for 2013, with the understanding that if additional funds become available in 2012, some requests could be accommodated.
I realize that this is a very difficult task. We can work together to keep investing in our city and looking for new opportunities that may present themselves while facing yet another extremely challenging year. Thank you for your cooperation and help.
2. Chart: 2012 Preliminary Debt Service to General Fund Expenditures
3. Chart: 2012 Preliminary GO Debt to Equalized Value
Also distributed was the 2012 Capital Budget Calendar which is linked online at:
http://www.cityofmadison.com/finance/documents/2012capbud/Cal-12-CAP-PUBLIC.pdf
These are the scary charts they hand out every year and somehow, the alders seem to think, these are scary but they hand them out every year, we can just keep doing what we are doing. But we can’t. It’s time to pay the price for all our capital expenditures. The big fancy projects and road expenses are a huge problem, and I think its starting to sink in, maybe?
It helps to have an adult in the Mayor’s office.
Brenda,
I’m asking this as a serious question, I don’t mean to be snarky (I admit to having been plenty snarky on the topic before and probably will be again!), I really want to understand this:
Why is it so hard for alders to understand how destructive their rubber-stamping of road budgets is?
And it wasn’t like we haven’t been telling each & every alder since forever of the dangers of overspending on roads. The current budget disaster was completely predictable, and in fact predicted:
http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=24240 .
You were there — you could help us understand the thinking. How can we wake them up? When I say ‘them,’ I’m including our “progressive” alders because they vote lockstep on these megalomaniacal road budgets as well.
Thank you for whatever insights you might be able to provide.
Mike – you know we tried a year or two and could only get 3 or so votes (Webber, Rummel, Konkel last round I think). After a while, it sucks to keep losing and people become unwilling to fight about things if they think it is in vain. Plus, alders need votes for the projects they want so they don’t want to vote against someone’s road if they think that people will vote against the thing they want in the budget. It becomes difficult to get things done if you piss people off . . .and alders don’t want to risk that. So principles fly out the door.
Very sad. If only those on the ‘good’ side could learn from the Republicans: principle is everything. Even in defeat they know they win. By losing while standing on principle, in the near-term, they set themselves up for victory over the long-haul. They understand that implicitly.
The ‘good’ side is all about myopic tactical victories.
The evil-side is all about long-term strategery(!).
And so we move ever-rightward….spending precious city capital to feed the fossil economy of the Wisconsin Pavers & Kochs who then dump vast amounts of resources into Republican coffers, full-to-overflowing. And then we wonder how FitzWalkerstan came about…..
We done dug our own grave.
(It was only one year of a vote on principle, against the paving budget, btw.)
Actually, we got three votes against the road projects one year, five the next. The year we got five against – specifically I was targeting the S&M intersection @$20 million – I had at least two other alders tell me they supported the idea in theory (the idea of cutting the road budget), but THAT road project needed to be built, so maybe next year.
What is tough for people pushing non-motorized transportation is that expansion often means bike lanes and sidewalks as well, so in theory things will get better for walkers and bicyclists. But we know how that turns out.
While the big road projects – not to mention the expansion of fire & police stations, libraries, and other facilities to service the sprawl – are the big costs, we should be vigilant that projects that benefit walking, biking and transit are not the first to fall. So far, Madison has funded paths, bridges, connections, etc. as well as big roads. We need to make sure that those are the projects protected, not cut as “luxuries.”
Forget new road projects – our current road infrastructure has been neglected year after year. This city is an absolute embarrassment when it comes to our existing roads. We’re chock full of potholed roads in desperate need of resurfacing. Someway, somehow, there’s never any money for this. The liberal spending spree on crap like Edgewater and a city public market funnels all our tax money (and attention) away from our existing crumbling roads.
I suspect that if we could look forward about 10 years, we would find gasoline prohibitively expensive. There is NOTHING to suggest we have the means to produce more petroleum and a lot of evidence suggests we will live with petroleum scarcity.
Therefore… building more roads for car centric transportation is foolish.
Those cities that offer good public transport systems will be much better positioned to attract investment going forward than cities rely on car transport.
Petroleum was a nice era, but it’s not the future.