Is That What Cities Do?

I attended the City Council meeting on November 8th. While the meeting lasted over 3 ½ hours, there was not a great deal of substantive discussion.

The 2011 budget was presented to the public, with the hearing continued to the next meeting. Next year's budget will likely be adopted at the December 14th meeting.

The cost to maintain our streets, at the current average pavement condition index rating of 69, has been determined by a pavement study to be $610,000 per year. (The cost to make all repairs identified in the study is $7 million. The City doesn’t have anywhere near that much money. The City currently has no plan to provide for that capital need.) The current budgeted amount to go towards this need in 2011 is $300,000. How can we find the other $300,000 in the budget to properly fund this obligation? Or, would you like to see the streets fall into further disrepair?

$180,000 is aimed at a City manager. (Do we need $180,000 worth of city management? In a separate discussion it was asked why we have a Court. The answer was, “That’s what cities do”. Other cities pay managers $180,000, so we should too?) When the Dissolution Petition that the City has filed goes away, the Metro District can hire a new manager. Could the District pay their manager a few extra bucks to manage City operations too?

Legal fees increase to $192,000 for 2011. Regular attorney fees increase to $144,000, plus special counsel is budgeted at an additional $48,000. At $175 per hour, that’s 1,100 hours worth of lawyering. Is that what cities do? Would it be wise to back off on being so aggressive about ramping up every function a city does?

We're contemplating $372,000 for legal fees and a manager. Are we spending more on this than on keeping our streets in good shape? Is that what cities do?

$75,000 is targeted towards communications. If the Chamber of Commerce is going to represent the merchants in the area, and if the Master Association is going to stage community events, what exactly does the City need to spend $75,000 to communicate?

Parks maintenance is $72,000. I thought the Metro District maintained the parks, and did a pretty good job of it. Why do we need to add another layer of government to maintain our parks?

The cost of financial services is $48,720. Maybe we could pay the Metro District half that much to have their staff do our books too. What we do is not terribly complex, and their staff is good at minding the books. (If we hired such services from the District, we would have to have a different auditor from the District.)

The City Hall, yes the “City Hall” lease is $32,400. Could we lease the upstairs of the Metro District building for half that? Would the dividers in City Hall fit nicely in the Metro District loft?

If we halved these costs we would find the $300,000 that’s needed for the streets. That money would then go to pay for what cities really are supposed to do. From there all we have to do pull together a capital plan to fund the big expenses, present the need to the citizens, and ask for the taxes needed to pay the bill.