$150M jail, $10M for the largest land purchase in Dane County’s history, $90M for the Alliant Energy Center. In the past 10 years the entire capital budget averaged only $36M per year. Just one of these projects is a significant increase in county spending.
Operating vs. Capital Budget
I’m talking about the capital budget here. So, not how much it costs to pay county staff, buy their office supplies, pay for electricity and gas and road salt, etc. Those are the annual operating costs that have to be paid every year to keep the county running. This is about building the buildings they work in. One time costs. These costs are usually financed by borrowing for either 10 or 20 years. Then, there are annual costs to pay back the loan – principal and interest. That is how a $150M jail ends up actually costing us $225M. 20 years of interest.
Jail
I gasped when I heard the jail was going to cost us $76M. Prior to this the largest county project was the DaneCom system, and that was around $30-35M. There was tons of hand wringing about how they were going to pay for that. Now, the cost of the jail has doubled from $76M to $150M and no one is batting an eye. $225M over 20-23 years. No biggie.
Alliant Energy Center
I struggle to find what the costs of the Alliant Energy Center will be, but today’s agenda for the redevelopment committee has this:
I wish there were numbers in that document above. The Executive Summary of the Master Plan says this:
Even if we get $30M from the state, will that go to pay for the public construction costs, or will it be used to subsidize private development?
Land Purchases
One land purchase that is nearly 30% of the 10-year average of the total spending for an entire year. $10M.
Affordable Housing?
A former (conservative) County Board Supervisor emailed me asking “$10 million for [land purchase] or $10 million for affordable housing” The actual email was much snarkier and I changed it make the intended point. I remember a few years ago when we struggled to get $2M for the Affordable Housing Fund at the county. With some hard work by Supervisor Heidi Wegleitner, that fund now gets $6M per year. But that’s peanuts compared to these other numbers.
Mental Health Crisis Restoration Center?
Crickets . . . not even close to having a plan . . .
Priorities people!
It’s funny how conservatives and I line up on some things when it comes to budgets. Often, they just don’t want to spend any money. Often I’m saying that we are spending the money on the wrong things! I’d rather see affordable housing and a crisis restoration center than a jail or the Alliant Energy Center. I’m good with land purchases, but the public is entirely left out of the debate on when and where to purchase land, so I don’t know if we’re spending the money where it needs to be spent.
Public input and transparency!!!
The county budget is clear as mud. The borrowing is so obtuse and lacks details that I could find. There aren’t really good briefings on the overall budget for the supervisors or the public. There is limited public input, then the magical uber amendment where everything got worked out without breaking open meetings laws. (Ha, ha!) However, I have to believe, all this proposed spending will have a huge impact on the county budget moving forward. It’d be nice if they’d show us what that impact will be. I’d love to see them discuss the big picture impacts of all this spending.
