2006-03-20 (2) - Laserfiche WebLink

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79 Mr. Caravati asked for an explanation about why employees in transit and finance are shown the way they are in the budget. Mr. O’Connell said that the City has to follow government accounting standards when putting together the budget. He said a number of programs are supported by grants and special funds, such as Social Services. He said utility employees are funded by enterprise funds which are paid for by the fees for the services provided. Mr. Caravati said he has two areas he would like to explore. First, a reduction by vacancy. He said he would like to look at the City as a whole to see if there is a similar history as in the Police Department, with a prudent view that we could make reductions. He said some localities have a hiring freeze that picks up money. Second, he said we have been putting 3% into the capital improvement budget, and he has argued that we put significantly over 3% into the CIP. He asked how much would it yield if we fell back to putting in only 3%. Dr. Brown said that a lot of speakers are right, and we have to earnestly work to reduce the tax rate. He said Council should give guidance to the City Manager about where to cut. He said benefits and staff are a big cost and we need to look there. He said that in Social Services which he is most familiar with because he is a member of the Social Services Advisory Board, the overwhelming number of services are mandated, and there are barely enough people to do the work, and they are very hard working people. He said he is not looking at across the board cuts, but feels that there are large departments that could tighten their budgets more. Mr. Schilling thanked speakers for their comments. He said there are many in the community who have contacted him about their ability to stay in their homes. He said the question is why has the budget nearly doubled in ten years. He said he feels the policy guidelines have contributed to this because the budget is developed within available revenue, which can be read as spend all the money that comes in. He said he has repeatedly asked for a change in this guideline. He said he recently asked for a five cent reduction, but the motion failed. He said he does not think that if we had not been living in a rapidly rising real estate assessment market we would be seeing budget increases this big. Mr. Lynch thanked those people who have dug into the budget. He said it is a complex document. He thanked Mr. Moore for his budget cuts, though he noted that he cut out the tax relief program. He said fixed personnel costs are driving the budget, but there are no easy answers about what to do about the size of government. He said it comes down to a political question. He said the police disability benefit is expensive, but he feels they need to have it. He said feedback from the public helps. He said the public raised good points. He said the reason the budget has doubled is that increasing it 7% over ten years will double it. He said the question is how the budget has increased 7% when inflation is half of that. He said the City is unlike other consumers in that we have to pay for rising health care, energy, and costs of things such as concrete which are going up in cost. He said the cost of providing services in an urban area have increased, such as the jail, which has increased 600% since 1997, and health care where we had claims amounting to $3 million in 1997 and the claims are now $8 million. He said he thinks we can get the rate of increase to less than 7%. He said that in some places we are double counting, where we give money and then contract back for services, such as the schools, transit, building maintenance, and police. He said about $1 million is double counted. He said we should look specifically at the cost of incarceration in the Juvenile Detention Center and at the benefit side. He said that a sick leave provision was added to retirement by Council last summer at a cost of $100,000 and the disability provision added for police. He said he thinks we can squeeze another $1 million out of the budget. He said nothing is politically easy to cut. He said he thinks a 6% increase would be appropriate. He said we should focus on the broader homeowners, and should not just shift it to the City Manager to solve. Ms. Hamilton said she does not see support on Council to cut the large item pickup.