City Council, February 21st - Work Session on the Budget Hole

With the holiday, Council meets today, Tuesday the 21st, downstairs in the Library for a formal Work Session on revenue and the budget.

January 2023

The decision to blow $2.4 million on the airport really should have been postponed to after this Work Session and to place it better in the context of the annual and on-going budget process.

A significant part of the Staff Report is vaguely about "sustaining" existing services, but they sure are talking about a pretty sizable staffing increase. (The table comes from the meeting materials; the pie chart is generated from that table, but is not itself included in the Council packet.)

3/5 of the pie = Police and Fire

Budget Committee Report

The relative proportion of "need" for Police and Fire is sure to be a topic.

The staffing is categorized by City Department rather than by functional services the Citizenry might recognize. "Parks" is really the only word that corresponds intuitively to service and value delivered to Citizens. Where does "Library" fit in? Better matching City services to staffing need might make the case for need stronger. The materials here are inward-facing and do not communicate the need very effectively to a wider public. They all depend on a consultant's analysis of staffing in other, similarly-sized cities.

Alternate Revenue table from October 2018
(yellow, the survivors, added)

Same table from February 2023 (red added)

The "Alternate Revenue" conversation dates back to 2018 at least. A City Operating Fee and Local Option Levy survive from the initial table back in October of 2018. A Payroll Tax was not on that initial list. 

It would be nice to see Property Tax Reform highlighted more as a longer-term strategy. A Land Value Tax might also better mesh with new Housing Production Strategies, for example.

Others have pointed out the disproportion on operations fee between what a household pays and what a big box national chain store pays.

DAB Feb 9th minutes

In absolute terms it's not so big, but one source of funding we keep avoiding is right-priced parking. The DAB keeps asking for it downtown. Should that be folded into this conversation?

Council churn and loss of knowledge (early 2019)

Overall, since this conversation dates back at least to 2018, and back then only Mayor Hoy was on Council, current Council is dependent on the way Staff is shaping the conversation and on Staff recommendations. But the whole may benefit from more analysis, conversation, and debate.