Partial quote of a comment at DMN Garland Blog posting, from (reportedly) Brian Ward, Garland Fire Fighters Association:
 
And what of our survey? Even before we saw the findings, select city council members were busy at work Tuesday and Wednesday trying to discredit our survey as some kind of “push-poll”—nothing of course could be further from the truth. These city council members are running scared because they don’t want this information to reach the general public and municipal voters.
 
It is our intention to educate the citizens on these issues now and to aggressively challenge council members in future elections who refuse to engage in reasonable discussion on this and other issues while choosing to blindly follow the city manager’s misguided budget policies.
 

 
I haven't seen the survey personally but there is a summary of sorts here.
 
This budget year, some difficult decisions have to be made. I expect a final vote tonight. I've listed much of the information in earlier posts over the last couple weeks. We had a shortfall of $7 million this year from last and we feel fortunate that it wasn't worse. We can be confident we'll face a deeper shortfall next year of $5 million or possibly more. It sounds bad but we're in better position than many other cities right now because we didn't wait until this year to start making the hard decisions. With belt tightening that has gone before and the deeper tightening that will come for the next few years, city management has proposed no pay increases for city employees this year. Additionally, they have proposed shortening the number of workdays that would effectively mean a one percent (actually, 1.15%) pay reduction. Dallas has had to cut much more proportionately and they had layoffs of over 800 employees.
 
The Garland Fire Fighters Association has opposed taking such cuts and has offered many reasons for why they feel it is a bad idea. They have spoken to their chief, city administration, council members and the mayor, and they have paid to survey the citizens through a political campaign organization and someone from the Firefighters Advocacy Corporation of Texas.
 
At the end of the day, cuts have to be made. Certainly the cuts don't have to be made as proposed. The city is picking up the increased health care costs this year and it is picking up the higher contribution necessary to the state retirement system. Employees could bare more of these costs. Laying off 25 of over 1000 employees paid through the General Fund would work too. These solutions, and similar ones, would cover the gap and have permanent effects to employee compensation. Instead, administrative staff have recommended funding the health care and retirement costs, and no layoffs. They recommended a temporary pay reduction that could be recouped in future years.
 
Another way is to raise taxes so the taxpayers cover the gap. That would add two more cents to the tax rate (see chart of Garland's current position among the highest-taxed cities).
 
The fire fighters initially proposed raising the so-called "Return on Investment" from GP&L, which would mean that just 85% of Garland citizens would pick up the tab through higher electric rates, a stealth tax, even though GP&L ratepayers already pay higher rates than most other providers and the vast majority of Metroplex residents. Further, they offered that the rate increase could be covered by the Rate Mitigation Fund if the Council would authorize taking the money from the Charter-protected account and using the funds contrary to what is allowed in the Charter. According to the GFFA survey summary, they now advocate changing the Charter to allow access to these funds earmarked by the citizens to protect electric ratepayers. I recounted in an earlier post the history behind the Fund and how the voters twice had to amend their Charter to protect it.
 
I wasn't part of any effort to discredit the survey as stated above. However, the term "push-poll" is accurate. A push-poll seeks to influence the answers given both in the way a question is asked and in the information not given. Check the summary; when the questions are recited, further explanation has to be made to clarify. Those taking the telephone poll weren't provided any of the pertinent additional information.
 
My dad, a Texas state trooper, often used the expression (usually referring to my brother or me): If I give you an inch, you'll take a mile. Last year, city employees lost their Cost of Living Allowance for their retirement accounts. We simply couldn't afford the drastically rising contributions. Through no fault of the city, the state retirement fund changed their accounting to cover bad management. (In fact, Garland was hugely responsible for bringing the bad practices to light.) To keep raising taxes to just cover those contributions, the city would have to raise the tax rate to about ten cents higher than the highest area city. Simply: we couldn't afford it.
 
The fire fighters, and certainly other public safety personnel, don't want to give that inch because they don't know how far down the mile they might be carried.
 
I will tell them that they are playing their hand very badly. That's because the Council's hands are tied. We have to balance the budget. We can do it with higher employee contributions or layoffs or higher taxes or higher utilities, but we have to do it. I wasn't elected to shirk my duties. No one told me it was okay to fold if there were threats to close the closest fire station to my house or that someone might be recruited to oppose me in the next election. The voters expect me to be competent at my job and balancing the budget in Job 1.
 
The answer to all this lies in the fire fighters survey. When asked, "Raise taxes if necessary to offset revenue shortages and maintain services," only 14% of the respondents agreed.
 
But I already knew that. Constituents feel they can tell me what they expect and they feel they can do it whenever they want. And they're right.