Disconnects between Present and Future Needs in Budget and VMT

The City budget crunch is on the front page today.

Front page today

In the packet for the meeting of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board for tomorrow, Thursday the 12th, members can read a timely and thoughtful letter Planning Commissioner Slater writes, in his personal capacity as Salemite, about the disconnect between capital investments and operations budgets.

excerpt from letter in Dec. SPRAB packet

Slater writes

When the City follows the 2013 parks master plan and adds developed park acreage to our system, we do not have a discussion with SPRAB, the City Council, or the general public about impact to the general fund.

Slater is particularly focused on parks acquisition, parks operations, and parks programming.

But this problem represents a more general pattern. We are seeing an acute instance of it at the Library now. Salemites authorized a seismic retrofit and remodel, and the City continues to shave down its hours of operation. Similarly, we've invested in a new Police Station, and are heading towards new Fire Stations. We have a new headquarters for Public Works. City Hall itself is getting a seismic retrofit and remodel even as we talk about reducing staff. Bonds for capital investments seem to be more popular than levies for operation budgets.

As they have narrowed their focus Strong Towns has moved away from talking about deferred maintenance, replacement costs, and full life cycles for infrastructure and development, part of the whole "Ponzi Growth Scheme." But this used to be a real interest for them. Others have observed it many times: We like to build shiny new things, but don't like to budget for maintenance and operations. So the shiny new thing languishes or it sucks resources away from older things. Too often there are not resources for both.

Slater is right to point out that we need to have a stronger link between conversations about capital budgets and the operations/maintenance obligations they imply.

Proposed gas station and drive-thru coffee

Separately, the City's published notices for two projects at the intersection of Kuebler and Turner Roads, a gas station with convenience store and drive-thru on the northeast side, and a drive-thru coffee shack (the plans in the Notice are for an "erosion control plan" and do not show the proposed development very well at all!) on the southwest side (google already shows a coffee cart there).

Proposed gas station

Proposed drive-thru coffee shack

Again, why are we permitting and building new fossil fuel infrastructure? And if our goal is to reduce VMT and associate emissions, why are we building new drive-thru infrastructure, which induces more driving trips and longer driving trips? These are more instances of disconnect between current development and future goals.

Gas stations and drive-thrus: Heading in wrong direction!

This part of town is already car-dependent, and new projects like these reinforce and worsen it. (Not to mention create new maintenance and replacement obligations in another generation!)

The vicious cycle - via TUMI