I am writing to offer the mayor and those on the council that voted to spend money for the survey different ways to think about spending this money. You just took $150 out of each homeowner’s pocket to conduct a survey to give you permission to do something you planned to do regardless. This speaks to a finding of the survey that 70% of respondents believe that managing city finances is very important and only 9% are satisfied.
The survey is professionally structured to give you the result you were looking for – Overwhelming support for increased taxes. Who wouldn’t vote for a “Public Safety, Roads, City Services measure”?
There is something here for everyone but unfortunately it is disingenuous because the city council is unlikely to spend the money on many of the described initiatives. • Police – the money is more likely to be spent on the SAFE initiative attached to the current budget proposal. You didn’t ask voters how they feel about providing 24-hour mental health services and none offered that suggestion in the comments
• Fire – Measure H money will begin to flow and then shortly after the fire service will be outsourced to Gold Ridge. Surveyed taxpayers were not informed that they are already slated to a new $260 parcel tax that they most likely will not get to vote on.
• Maintenance of Streets and Roads – past councils have had surpluses to spend on streets and roads. They chose to fund only projects for which grants are available. Without a lot of data, the city manager has said that we could use $1.5MM per year just to get our roads up to modern standards. It would be more honest to limit the use of this new sales tax money for local roadwork. • Parks and Trails – We have had money for a new trail for several years and no one thought it was a priority to spend it. Why would new money go to the trails? • Library – completely disingenuous. The library services are funded by and determined by the county. Our responsibility is the building, which has had major spending in the last two years and should be fine until the EIFD initiative is fully backed.
• Youth and Senior Services sounds great, but the city has for many years partnered successfully with non-profits to provide services. There is no indication that this is not meeting the needs of local citizens. • Retaining and attracting local businesses – sounds good. Taxpayers would like to see the list of projects in the pipeline if there was funding. • General government use: This is the reality of where this money is going to go. • Not stated is the need to build a financial cushion to protect the city against catastrophic failure of Saint Vincent de Paul’s home key project the city is guaranteeing.
The mayor has a single-minded goal to raise taxes. The survey showed that streets were the highest priority for city residents. The survey also showed very low confidence in the city council’s ability to manage city finances.
One suggestion would be to focus this initiative solely on spending to improve the quality of our streets. Dedicated funding would address the city’s #1 Issue. That would be progress.