Final on the Tax Levy - WHEW!

Up to the end when we finally approved this years tax levy on Monday, December 19, we had some lively discussion. Perhaps you could catch it on Channel 19 this or next week.

Denny Hanson made a last minute suggestion to hold off until July on 6 of the new hires we approved which would have cut another $208,554. Loved the idea but not the timing.

We had to vote against this in spite of wanting very badly to make the cut. The department heads making these requests did so after working short-handed in some cases since 2002. We discussed each request in detail at our previous week's hearing and made the decision to approve these positions. Wouldn't have if they weren't needed and so to now delay them for six months without a chance to discuss the impact with the department heads wasn't, in my mind and several of the others, the responsible thing to do. Unfortunately we couldn't postpone the approval decision until further discussion.

We scrubbed through the 245 pages of detail department by department for three days last week. This was after our city administrator worked for the last three MONTHS with each department head to make a recommendation that would fit within our projected tax levy of $36,000,000. Be glad to discuss anything in it you think we could have done better. We could only scrape a bit over $314,000 from the proposed levy.

For those of you who saw outrageous increases in your property tax I suggest you first look at how much your assessed valuation went up. The state directed the county to bring the valuation up to par since they felt many residential and commercial properties were under-valued. They did this with the resultant "tax shock". There was much said about lowering our tax levy to correct for this but it's not possible. Denny has suggested and we all agree to form a working group to address the complicated state property tax process this year.

If you think your assessment is too high you can contact the county at the number that will be provided on your tax statement. You can also bring your case to the city's Board of Equalization (I chair it this year). There's also the State's "Circuit Breaker" program for residential properties to address fairness by either income or property increase over a certain %.

I asked our city finance director to crunch some numbers for us. If we used last year's tax of $32 M (0% increase) the effect on a $175,000 residence that saw a 40% increase to $245,000 would have reduced their 57% tax increase to 52% or $104 for the year. They would have still had to pay $1055 more to live in their house.

Another way to look at this is the end result of reducing our tax levy by $1,000,000.
FOr every million $$$ your tax bill would be reduced by .9% for residential and .6% commercial or about $20 for the average resident.I'm not saying that $20 isn't important to you and me but try to think of the number of street repairs, police, fire, and other services that would have to go to save this amount.

We did manage to cut the proposed estimate to an 8.5% increase from last year. Taking into account the city growth of 4.5% which is real and we have to add services for and we're left with 4.0% which is just about right on target for the cost of living.

In summary, we had a pretty grueling week, made some tough decisions to balance providing services to you that we feel you want and yet keep the $$$ down as much as possible, and hope that we can do better for next year.

Clear Channel Community Corner

Wow! I've been invited to tape a half hour segment of the Community Corner to be played this weekend on Rochester's Clear Channel stations. So many things to talk about but the important thing is what would YOU like to hear? Any suggestions?

So far I'm thinking that the city's budget and the budget setting process would take a minute or two (HA!); then I've had questions about the proposed bio-technology building proposed for the downtown area; also, a hot topic at local governments around the country is emminent domain. ANy other ideas? Let me know before Friday morning.

Air time is not for sleepy-heads so I'd better be good.

Fox Country 102.5 FM 7 to 7:30 AM
Laser 1270 AM 6 to 6:30 AM
KWEB 970 AM 6 to 6:30 AM

Bob

City Leader Will Be Missed

City Council Member Jean McConnell, Ward 3 passed on earlier today after suffering a massive stroke at Monday's Committee of the Whole preliminary budget setting hearing.

Jean served the city as a council member since 1987 and was known throughout as a fiscally conservative member of the council with strong convictions. Though we often differed in our approach I looked to Jean for advice and support and he never let me down. He was a frequent visitor to my Friday morning coffee's at Grandmas Kitchen stiffing me for his coffee and toast and we joked about that.

We often observed that though we may have differed at times we could still be friends and I cherished that friendship. We often joked on the council that in matters concerned with spending money we considered a 6-1 vote unanimous, knowing that Jean would take the lone position.

Please remember Jean, his wife Catherine, and his family in your prayers this Holiday season. Thanks.

Greetings From Charlotte

I can’t believe that it’s already Friday and I didn’t post my update to this site all week. I’m attending the National League of Cities (www.NLC.org ) Congress of Cities conference in Charlotte, NC. Over 3500 elected officials representing 1200 cities across the US are here.

To say that we’ve been kept very busy is an understatement. I’d met and exchanged ideas about the role of a city council member with others at workgroups, panel discussions, breaks, over lunch, at the exhibit hall, the elevator … you name it. What a great opportunity to learn from others. Elected officials from cities big and small, North, South, East, West, or like us, from the Mid-West, share very common problems, very common values, very common desires for their communities.

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday attending all day workshops presented by the Leadership Training Institute – The Six Essential Tools of Public Service and an especially helpful workshop for me, Public Problems; Democratic Solutions. This last one I hope will help me become more sensitive to the public values each of us has so that I might work better with you and the other council members to develop a solution that recognizes these difference values and is truly a “win-win” solution that we both agree on.

Thursday and Friday were filled with excellent speakers among them being Robert Reisch, former Secretary of Labor. Anthony Williams, Mayor of Washington DC, is the NLC president and he’s a real interesting character as well.

Besides the General Opening Sessions I spent the last two days attending a wide variety of workshops; Expanding Your Local Economy Using technology to Promote Citizen Involvement; Strengthening Community Through Participatory Governance; Eminent Domain in a Post-Kelo Environment (NO! We aren’t planning to take your house away to build a shopping center! Just getting info. ) and Can Blogs Improve Your Constituent Communications? ( and I’m hoping and betting “Yes”. That’s why I hope you’re reading this.)

Just returned from a mobile workshop on Revitalizing Your Neighborhoods. Amazing what they’ve done.

We’ve got one more day of sessions, tomorrow, Saturday.

Then next week we’re going to pour through the line-by-line detail of the city budget. Here’s your chance to help us by attending the sessions and letting us know what you think we should cut down on, do away with, or even what you want to make sure we don’t do anything real dumb and do away with. Wrote about this in a previous posting so check it out.

From the South, “See y’all later now, hear?”