Streets of Fire

I attended the 10/12 City Council meeting. The highlight of the work session was a first presentation of a notion for the 2011 budget. Property values are anticipated to decline 14% at the next evaluation, so the City will see a decline in revenue of $100k. (Impacts to the Metro District will be far greater.) For the first year of the valuation, that's OK because the City will not have to repay the Master Association $144,000 for the cost of incorporation. The budget assumes the County will provide the same level of service for a price that is 14% lower. While it never hurts to ask, this assumption is unlikely to become truth.

The budget is largely flattish, save for unbundling of services that will be provided by employees, and maintenance of the surface of the streets. We learned the condition of the streets is currently rated at 69 (on a scale of 100?). While the budget anticipated $200,000 for surface street repairs (which would take the rating to 54), we learned an expenditure of $610,000 is needed just to continue the surface conditions of the streets at the current level. Council advised that letting the condition of the surface of the streets become worse than current levels is unacceptable. An additional $410,000 will need to be added to the budget just to maintain streets at current levels. If we wanted to repair all of the problems with the surface of the streets, the cost would be $7,000,000. The City does not have that kind of money, and is not likely to.

If the next budget includes the true cost of County services and the cost to maintain the surface of the streets at current conditions, we likely to not have enough revenue to fund the budget. We can dip into the annexation fees, but that is one time money. I fully support maintaining the surface of the streets at 69 or better, and support asking residents if they will pay a tax to continue the surface of the streets as-is or better. We did not talk about money for street issues below the surface, or for the maintenance of other assets owned by the City. I asked that $25,000 be put into the budget to understand what our financial obligation is to maintain these assets, as well as looking at the cost of their replacement over time. When you read articles in the paper about how the City is in great financial shape, you might want to ask a couple questions about that claim. Once we get a true number for costs, we can come back to citizens and ask how they want to pay for it.

The highlight of the regular session was a debate over establishing a policy for spending money out of the annexation fee that is over and above budgeted and appropriated dollars. Not to exceed expenditures of around $70,000 were approved for additonal street sealing. I believe this is money well spent, even if we don't have it in the budget. We need to protect our streets, and keep costs from skyrocketing next spring due to neglect.

As to cutting expenses in order to balance the budget, I've sent a note to the manager for consideration in preparation of the next budget draft. We should eliminate the utility consultant because we are not in the water business. We should look at hiring an in-house attorney, or be realistic about billable hours for pursuits that are not going to happen. Our legal expense is way, way too high. We shoudl stop chasing the Metro District, as we have no standing in their issues. Taking on management of a new park is puzzling, but operating a water feature given our water issues and the lack of revenue from the park is imprudent. If that's not enough to balance things, we simply need to ratchet down the City operations until such a time as voters approve taxes to support a higher level of service by the City.

In the "Man Bites Dog" category, our communications committee suggested we hire CH2MHill to be out communications provider. This is really weird. We're trying to unbundlge and move away from CH2MHill. The search for a communciations provider began with the CH2MHill communciations consultant saying their costs are too high, and we should hire a small local firm to help us out, as our needs are modest. Instead there's a request to increase the budget form the low $60,000's to $70,000 to pay for this notion. This is really dumbfounding. Someone isn't getting the memo.

We did have some voluneteers come forward to serve on the finance and public works committees. They sounded qualified, and it was good to see fresh faces wanting to help out the volunteers already serving on Council.