Thursday, October 05, 2006
Building a budget for a building city, Pt. 1
This month, over five Monday and Wednesday nights, the Lakewood City Council embarks on what's likely the most important work it will do in 2006.
This is the month we dive into meticulous reports from the city manager and staff. We prepare a budget for 2007. This is where the tough decisions are made. How many police officers do we have? How many people work in the permit department? How many people will respond to complaints about speeding or about drug houses?
In short ... what kind of services will the city offer?
It's important stuff. My goal after every workshop is to provide information so you can begin to develop your own opinions. This post reflects info from the first night of the workshops, so we are very early in the process.
Document 1 this week is the city manager's summary of the burning issues. In this, Andrew Neiditz educates us about a number of things. You can read them for yourself, but among them:
- The draft budget eliminates seven jobs in order to balance the budget. Now, bear in mind, this is draft. The budget must be approved by the council after public hearings. But it is part of Andrew's job to give us a draft balanced budget to work from. The jobs are vacant, so layoffs are not anticipated.
- The jobs that were eliminated include two community service officers, who have been the cornerstone of the neighborhood policing policy. More on that in a sec.
- The business license fee would go from $35 to $45. It's still more in most cities, but this is still obviously an increase.
- The water district would, for the first time, pass along a tax to customers on behalf of the city. It's pretty normal throughout the state to find a city tax on a water bill, but not at all in Lakewood. This would amount to about $6.75 a year for the average Lakewood water ratepayer, and raise about $250,000.
So yeah, we'll have something to talk about this month.
One thing found elsewhere in the budget: you can rest assured the city is taking the property tax initiative seriously. The budget assumes Lakewood will get $5.56 million in property taxes in 2007, up from $5.5 million in 2006. That's an increase of only about $10 per person in Lakewood. If your property taxes are going up a lot, please don't blame your friendly neighborhood city.
Document 2 is about the police department. On Monday and Wednesday nights, we will work our way through the proposed budget for each department. Police was first up as it is by far the largest department. You will find here the department's goals and accomplishments for this year, and the goals for next year.
Once again, you can read the info yourself. The one thing that I suspect jumped out at all of us is that instead of having one neighborhood police officer and one community service officer, each of the six police "beats" in Lakewood would share a half person. In other words, one neighborhood officer and one community service officer would work two neighborhoods.
The reason I keep bringing this up is that I think you will see it change. Even if it is not changed, the subject will sure be discussed. The council has generally been very supportive of giving more voice to individual neighborhoods. That's why Lakewood has promoted its system of neighborhood associations and their monthly meetings. I continue to believe it's awful that Oakbrook has never had such an association, and its own neighborhood police officer and community service officer. You can make a good argument that much of what Oakbrook gets for the taxes it pays to Lakewood are road improvements and police protection along or near the I-5 corridor. And that's dandy, but ... We need to push police into neighborhoods to help organize neighborhood watch groups and work with other neighborhood groups to prevent crime.
If we can prevent crime, we have fewer victims and fewer crimes.
That sounds like a good investment to me.
Of course, this means that the council has to find either $180,000 to hire three community service officers, or even $500,000 to bring on a full complement of community services officers and three neighborhood police officers. (Neighborhood police officers are full police officers, and come with a bigger cost in salaries and equipment)
That's a big chunk of change. Stay tuned for further discussion. We have the budget of every other department in the city to go through.
I should quickly note that nothing I have written about is guaranteed - that's why we are having these workshops. We'll go into all of these subjects in more detail.
Forward this post
This is the month we dive into meticulous reports from the city manager and staff. We prepare a budget for 2007. This is where the tough decisions are made. How many police officers do we have? How many people work in the permit department? How many people will respond to complaints about speeding or about drug houses?
In short ... what kind of services will the city offer?
It's important stuff. My goal after every workshop is to provide information so you can begin to develop your own opinions. This post reflects info from the first night of the workshops, so we are very early in the process.
Document 1 this week is the city manager's summary of the burning issues. In this, Andrew Neiditz educates us about a number of things. You can read them for yourself, but among them:
- The draft budget eliminates seven jobs in order to balance the budget. Now, bear in mind, this is draft. The budget must be approved by the council after public hearings. But it is part of Andrew's job to give us a draft balanced budget to work from. The jobs are vacant, so layoffs are not anticipated.
- The jobs that were eliminated include two community service officers, who have been the cornerstone of the neighborhood policing policy. More on that in a sec.
- The business license fee would go from $35 to $45. It's still more in most cities, but this is still obviously an increase.
- The water district would, for the first time, pass along a tax to customers on behalf of the city. It's pretty normal throughout the state to find a city tax on a water bill, but not at all in Lakewood. This would amount to about $6.75 a year for the average Lakewood water ratepayer, and raise about $250,000.
So yeah, we'll have something to talk about this month.
One thing found elsewhere in the budget: you can rest assured the city is taking the property tax initiative seriously. The budget assumes Lakewood will get $5.56 million in property taxes in 2007, up from $5.5 million in 2006. That's an increase of only about $10 per person in Lakewood. If your property taxes are going up a lot, please don't blame your friendly neighborhood city.
Document 2 is about the police department. On Monday and Wednesday nights, we will work our way through the proposed budget for each department. Police was first up as it is by far the largest department. You will find here the department's goals and accomplishments for this year, and the goals for next year.
Once again, you can read the info yourself. The one thing that I suspect jumped out at all of us is that instead of having one neighborhood police officer and one community service officer, each of the six police "beats" in Lakewood would share a half person. In other words, one neighborhood officer and one community service officer would work two neighborhoods.
The reason I keep bringing this up is that I think you will see it change. Even if it is not changed, the subject will sure be discussed. The council has generally been very supportive of giving more voice to individual neighborhoods. That's why Lakewood has promoted its system of neighborhood associations and their monthly meetings. I continue to believe it's awful that Oakbrook has never had such an association, and its own neighborhood police officer and community service officer. You can make a good argument that much of what Oakbrook gets for the taxes it pays to Lakewood are road improvements and police protection along or near the I-5 corridor. And that's dandy, but ... We need to push police into neighborhoods to help organize neighborhood watch groups and work with other neighborhood groups to prevent crime.
If we can prevent crime, we have fewer victims and fewer crimes.
That sounds like a good investment to me.
Of course, this means that the council has to find either $180,000 to hire three community service officers, or even $500,000 to bring on a full complement of community services officers and three neighborhood police officers. (Neighborhood police officers are full police officers, and come with a bigger cost in salaries and equipment)
That's a big chunk of change. Stay tuned for further discussion. We have the budget of every other department in the city to go through.
I should quickly note that nothing I have written about is guaranteed - that's why we are having these workshops. We'll go into all of these subjects in more detail.
