08/31/06
Tax Increase Becomes Item in Budget Talks -
Categories: Opinions, Taxes & Budget -
Douglas
@ 10:31:40 pm
Like, duh!
I think the Garland city staff has done an excellent job preparing a budget and I sincerely feel they have done a good job policing themselves to keep a possible tax increase lower than what had been projected.
There are a few difficulties though. Primarily, the directions given months ago to staff were from a Council that has now been replaced. I sincerely believe that the citizens sent a message to everyone—the newly elected members, the Council, and the staff—that it was time for change, the old ways of bickering, bloc voting, and obstructing elections for personal reasons were no longer to be tolerated. Those directions given then aren't fully valid now. New priorities and expectations have been introduced into the process.
The recent Council Retreat successfully identified the priorities of this Council. However, there is not yet any documentation of those efforts. The spirit and consensus derived from the Retreat have not been a part of the Budget process. Even though the elections were delayed over a month, the Budget process, by state law, is right on track. Some of the usual input to the process has not been there.
All the Budget meetings until tonight have been presentations from the various departments. At no point was there a "sanity check," the question asked, "are we still on course?" Finally that question came tonight and there was no clear consensus that a majority supported a tax increase. A call was made to further scrub the budget, to do as much as possible to eliminate waste, redundancies.
The City Council will meet Tuesday night for its regular meeting and to consider the budget. A vote on the budget has been tentatively scheduled, although a vote is not required by law until September 19. There is still time to further scrub this Budget and do our duty as Council members delivering the services that the citizens expect and safeguarding their tax money in the process.
I have criticized many times over the years—and through the recent campaign—that we did not see the Council scrutinizing the Budget adequately, that there was a tendency to accept the city manager's budget as presented and then add on favorite pet projects. In the past, the city manager has presented a budget that would not have resulted in a tax increase but the Council voted for one anyway when their projects had been added.
I have criticized the process of moving funds around on the last night like chess pieces until the citizens were left with a patchworked chess board as a consequence of the hurried and harried decisions made in the latter minutes of the Budget cycle.
I have criticized previous Councils for spending money that we may expect but we don't yet have. New construction is up, sales taxes are up, new shopping is coming online, new developments are envisioned, revitalization of our aging shopping centers is being addressed, the property values of commercial areas is up—however, the money is not here yet. We aren't rich yet. We aren't even quite to the point of "better off" yet.
We may have to keep the cinch in our belts a little longer.
I'd love to be the one that says here are new parks and pedestrian trails and new libraries and more personnel and bigger, badder police cars and brighter, redder fire trucks. I want to cut the ribbon that says "Goodbye, Poor House; Hello, Good Times."
Unfortunately, I know that if we are prudent now, that day will be here much sooner.
I feel so strongly that we must concentrate our efforts on raising the value of our city, the tax base, not the tax rate. Significant strides have been made but we must do more. We are in a competitive race and the window we have now is already closing as DART prepares to link to Rowlett and build new lines to Farmers Branch, Carrollton, Irving, and southeast Dallas, as SH-190 reaches further east to newer homes and commercial areas, as Frisco, Colleyville, and Grapevine attract investment to their cities, as we watch our median income decline.
We must instill a sense of competition that runs from the Council to the proverbial Meter Maid, that embraces high-quality development,—
That earns those future tax dollars by delivering higher property values and prosperous service entities.
[Return to Website]
Comments:
For what? Yes, staff has spent a long time on the budget, but that is the same every year-it is what we pay these folks good money to do. Take communications again-cell phones, pagers, and long distance. Have you ever seen the "cell phones" Home Depot sales associates use? Those may be cell phones, but they work on a system within the store. Garland has a City-wide mesh network. Could it be similarly used for staff to communicate within the city, and not incur any phone provider charges? Such a system as Home Depot uses could certainly be used within facilities like the Warehouse where a warehouse worker may need to know specific items to retrieve.
Pagers are outdated. There is no need for pagers any longer. Cell phones perform every function a pager may perform, and cell phones do it better than pagers ever did. Pagers must be at least as expensive these days as cell phones because they are no longer widely supported. If someone needs a pager, why not issue a bottom-of-the-line cell phone instead? It is a better tool by far than a pager ever was. I'm all for using the right tool for any particular job. I'm just not convinced pagers are that tool any longer.
There's other stuff in this budget. Footwear, Food, Athletic Supplies, even a Commission paid on Internet Sales. Pennies add up to dollars. Dollars add up to a cent and a quarter tax increase. Let's not be penny wise and pound foolish, rather let's mind the cents and let the dollars take care of themselves.
09/01/06 @ 18:08 To claim excellent performance on a comparative scale to a "less than expected tax increase" is setting the bar a little low.
I don't expect a tax increase at all.
I expect a tax decrease.
I expect innovative management of the City's resources.
I expect my Council to direct Staff to achieve those ends.
This budget may be considered to be better than previous years, but it is nowhere near..."excellent".... given the circumstances, talent, experience and resources of this Staff. I'm not sure why the staff needs to be so emotionally coddled to do their jobs with cheap oral platitudes. These folks are well paid professionals. They are not part of a "Voluntary Budget Auxiliary" whose exercise of any fiscally oriented task should be gratefully accepted an act of "Good Samaritan-ism" to the Citizens of Garland.
I have reviewed many of the line items in the budget and am appalled at the blasé acceptance of the expenditures by the Council. The intentional placing of items subsidized or otherwise, in areas to obscure their dissemination as admitted by Mr Bradford, is reason enough to deny their funding.
I know that as a long time resident, I will not be alone in watching what the Council says and comparing it to what the Council actually does. I hope the Council's performance to addressing the budget concerns of the Citizens will actually "earn" them an "excellent" rating that was so freely meted out to Staff for this budget.
09/02/06 @ 07:48 I wanted to clarify the budget "concerns" directed at the City "Staff". The group of "Staff" individuals that have collected and collated the numbers for the actual budget are obviously not the "staff" responsible for the source of those amounts. If your comments regarding performance "excellence" were commending their efforts, then obviously I would agree. My expectations regarding the management of the City's resources remains the same.
09/02/06 @ 18:09
09/03/06 @ 10:37 I'm not sure how long you have resided here in Garland, but I bought my house right out of High School over 23 years ago. My street was in bad shape and I was told by City officials then that my street was already scheduled to be repoured and would be replaced, and the sidewalks (finally) poured within 2-3 years as the bonds had already been approved. When this didn't happen in the first fifteen years, I was told that although the bonds were approved , and despite the fact that my street was still on some obscure repair schedule, that there was nothing actually requiring that the money be spent on repairing my street.
My street was finally repaired last November only 23 years later, just in time for my property appraisal on my lot (the part NOT subject to homesteading or discount) to increase from $ 8,000.00 to $ 30,000.00. .....
Mr Willis, who posted above, has lived here and paid taxes here all his life, and, I have been paying taxes here myself for over 20 years, so forgive me if I feel many of us have already been "paying" for "it" for a while.
09/03/06 @ 16:35 However, I have lived in Garland for 19 years, and have been impressed by
the progress made in the time on major thorough fares, new housing, SH190,
code comlaince, water supply, and sewer processing. No other city can match
Garland, not even Plano with the highest per capita income in the US, and a
very successful light rail business development. Garland is arguably the greatest
city in the world!! And now we have the finest City Council of any city in the US.
But, by the same token my property appraisal has gone from $53K in 1993 to
$86,060 for 2005/2006. Even so I am not concerned because of the improvements,
and now I have Firewheel 5 min away. WAY TO GO GARLAND. In addition my current
tax rate is only 2.8856%, and very reasonable to my way of thinking. I never have
to worry about power outage, flooding, or clean water supply, solid waste pickup, police
service or firefighter service. WAY TO GO GARLAND. I am very pleased with my
modest tree lined street, with rear entry garages, nicely maintained brick homes,
under ground utilities. No where else in the world could I have what I have here,
5 berms, 3 baths parking for 8 cars in rear. WAY TO GO GARLAND.
What is noticeable is the fine vehicles Garland City staff drives, and the excellent
desktop computers I see in every Garland City Dept I visit, and the fine facilities Garland
City government has. I think we can slow down, especially since we now have a $.25Billion
bond program to pay for, voted by less than 8% of the voters in Garland in 2004. In a few
years we might be able to look at more development financing as business tax base
grows, which is what we expect with Firewheel, and Pro Bass.
09/17/06 @ 18:53 Comments are closed for this post.
