Talking Taxe: Running out of time

To begin with:

The Police and Firefighters unions are the only ones not to have agreed to concessions as have all the other Royal Oak employee unions. Instead, their compensation rose when all others took a cut.

Most current financial problems would be immediately mitigated if the Police and Firefighters accepted those same concessions, and they know it.

Instead, we have five retired fire chiefs (all receiving handsome retirement pay) sending out political letters, and a one-sided political insert in a local newspaper. They have chosen to bargain in public.

Unless those unions participate in solving the city's problems, no achievable combination of restructuring and revenue enhancement will get Royal Oak out of its deteriorating financial situation.

Where are the brave elected or appointed officials who will stop hiding behind "we mustn't conduct collective bargaining in the press" and start saying some of this out loud and repeatedly?

Disclosure:

Obviously, the presentation of facts in the column at left is less than objective. Unfortunately -- for a pro-cop and pro-fire guy like I am -- it supports my previous labeling of any proposed public safety millage as "stupid."

For more than a couple of years, I have had background meetings with this or that former and serving public official, elected or appointed. Some meetings have been at my request, other meetings have been requested by the individual.

Conversing on background is not devious, even when I'm being lobbied. What's happening is that my interlocutors want to be sure I understand where they are coming from when I address a situation.

I understand that the current situation calls for constructive confrontation with Police and Fire. As a start: in the press, in service clubs, in Town Halls, we should be hearing about about the resentment among non public safety employees and about suspected relationships between named city officials and the unions.

Let's have public debates where spokesmen for each side have at each other. -- FJV: 27 Sep 2010

Do your homework
It's going to be a long battle, and this page starts the tracking.

For context and if you're serious about being helpful in the debate about millages, print out and repeatedly refer to the following pages:

2010 Tax Dialogue

2010-2012 Finances

Royal Oak talks Millage

The case against a dedicated Public Safety Millage

2011: Continuing the case against a dedicated Public Safety Millage

First Budget Meeting
Staff gets an A, Commission gets a C
City Manager Don Johnson and Finance Director Julie Rudd get an A for providing helpful context for CITCOM's work on the next city budget. Nothing can prevent eyes from glazing over after an hour of dollars and percentages presented orally and in pie charts, bar graphs, line graphs, spreadsheets, and tabulations. That is the fault of the subject matter, not of the hundreds of staff hours which must have gone into the preparation of the overview.

Johnson labeled the forthcoming budget as "transitional" . . . called some expense/revenue ratios "unsustainable" . . . named as "good news" the fact that taxable values have not dropped as much as had been anticipated. He pointed out such practical considerations as that the coming retirement of City Engineer Elden Danielson creates the opportunity to consider combining two or three operationally related departments.

Rudd reminded everyone that all taxes collected by the city don't stay with the city . . . only 34% stays; the rest goes to other governmental agencies -- local, county, and state . . . some dollar values serve as "place-holders" in the never-ending dynamics of budget preparation and control. . . . Her area-graph on interest income elicited a gallows-group-chuckle with its clear depiction of that income dropping to 1% or so. . . . The chart shows legacy costs will exceed the general operating levy (GR property taxes).

All of which was a bit much to absorb, but there is no alternative to seeing and hearing all those data before the commission can meaningfully get to work on the nuts-and-bolts of the budget.

The 5-person commission appropriately remained quiet for almost 40 minutes (Andrzejak and Rasor were absent). Unfortunately, when they began to comment and question, a couple of them disappointed by going into "we have to save paper-clips" mode. If that mindset is permitted to dominate during the next two budget sessions, CITCOM will have failed us all.

If CITCOM really believes that city services can be cut enough to save hundreds of thousands of dollars without public objection, the commissioners -- not the staff -- should identify the cuts.

If CITCOM really believes that questioning membership costs in professional and governmental groups and quibbling about whether this or that position requires a fulltime or part-time worker is the way to go, it would be a better to cancel any more budget sessions and adopt the draft which Staff has already generated.

Long story, short: If CITCOM doesn't come up with a millage proposal -- but not a dedicated public safety millage -- Royal Oak is two or three years away from having Lansing assign us an emergency financial manager. "Bring it on" is the reaction of those cynics among us who welcome an EFM as the only way to break the stranglehold the Police and Fire unions currently have on city finances. -- 02 May 2011

First 2011 Budget Meeting