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| Yowser! |
I participated in my first budget
committee meeting last Wednesday evening and it was the equivalent of
taking a cold shower. On a night where in year's past I would have
normally been in church, sitting in the city council chambers and
trying to follow the reports of all the department heads provoked me
to silently pray nonetheless. At meeting's end, the first of several
to follow, we were, by my count, $156,000 in the hole. For a guy who
lives on a modest income and who pastors a small congregation with a
lot leaner budget than even our town's size municipality it
was...er...educational.
Every year at this time, the budget committee sits down to start crunching the numbers to formulate next year's budget. This committee – made up of the mayor, the city clerk, the deputy city clerk and two members of the council – is charged with submitting a balanced budget for approval by the city council by it's November meeting. Round 1 of this process is listening to the individual department heads – Community Center, Library, Public Works, and Police – present their needs and requests and get their proverbial two cents in. If you stacked all the paper that was passed around that night by rough count it amounted to fifty pages (which pales by comparison to Rice Lake's budget which I have on good authority to be 240 pages long!)
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| This doesn't represent Chetek but it's something like this |
There are facility needs – the
library needs a new roof within the next five years, Public Works
needs a new-to-us dump truck, the Community Center needs a new
furnace and air conditioner. The cost of the software that runs the
computers in our squad cars has risen astronomically. And the snow
plow season will soon be upon us and we have yet to fill our salt
and sand bins. But the lion's share of the red ink that is currently
on the 2017 budget can be attributed to the rise in health care
costs. All of us who pay health care premiums can attest to the fact
that if there is any sector of the economy that is not affected by
the laws of gravity it's health care. In fact, do premiums ever
come down?
For the past couple months City Clerk
Carmen Newman has been hard at work trying to find the best possible
policy for our city's employees. Despite all her best efforts to the
contrary, it will cost us more next year than it did this year and
deductibles will go up.
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| It's gotta happen |
There are other expenses we will incur. Those aging light poles on the bridge have to come down much sooner than later. Though we applied for a grant to pay for half of our costs involved with relining the sewer pipes, we didn't make the cut. That problem – the processing of relatively clean ground water every day seeping into our sewer lines – is not going away. So we're going to have to secure a low interest loan to pay for it. It's too soon to tell if my personal pet project – the commencement of a sidewalk schedule to accompany our street schedule – will even make the grade given some of the other needs facing the city.
The day after I was elected mayor, I
was stopped by my neighbor from across the street to congratulate me
and plead with me to please don't raise his taxes. I was told point
blank by someone at the Community Center just the other day that I
better not raise her taxes. Here's the thing I'm learning: it's not
that easy for a mayor, let alone a city council, to raise anybody's
taxes on account of state levy restrictions. I suppose some of that
is in place to prevent every small town in Wisconsin from installing
a municipal pool and raise taxes to pay for it. But the total amount
we are going to receive from the State would hardly fill a kiddie
pool let alone a public one. $4,000. That's the sum total of
our levy next year: $4,000 bucks. I can almost hear the guy from the
state treasury's office deadpan it, “Don't spend it all in one
place.” I guess that's why some communities – like Chippewa
Falls, for example – experiment with things like a “wheel tax”
(a measure that was upheld just last night in their council meeting
by a 9-6 vote) as a way to generate more income. But even there the
state restricts what you can do with those monies and may, in fact,
take some away from you which offset any gains you might have made.
So, what happens next? Having heard
from the department heads and received their projected budget, the
budget committee will hunker down and start prioritizing, separating
from what we would like and what we need. Anybody who's ever been
involved in that process knows that's more art than science. What
helps us is our outlay accounts – money that has been set aside to
help pay for building improvements, purchasing of new equipment and
so forth. That will certainly ease our pain as we go forward. And the
sale of Knapp Haven (now Atrium Post Acute Care of Chetek). As much
of a windfall as some might think it will be by the sale of that
facility, a large segment of that amount has already been designated
to “repay” us for the legal expenses incurred with that
transaction (somewhere in the ballpark of $150,000!) All that to say
don't expect new “old timey” street lights on Second Street
anytime soon.
In an inter department memo sent prior
to the first budget meeting, City Clerk Carmen Newman had this to
say: “The loss in revenues and restriction on levies caused the
City to decrease expenditures. One of the main cuts in services was
the youth programs – lifeguards, summer recreation programs and the
like. We really have not cut other services to the residents. We
still provide garbage service, 24/7 police coverage, a public library
and community center. Public works and the Police Department does a
lot of community service at no cost to the user (such as Chamber of
Commerce events like Liberty Fest, Brew Fest, Harvest Fest, etc.).
They are putting up fencing, road barricades, parking signs, picking
up garbage, patrolling, directing traffic, etc. Can we afford to do
this?” It's a good question.
We can't have something for nothing.
Streets (and sidewalks) have to be maintained. The community's safety
and well-being need to be ensured. But something's gotta give. And
Carmen tells me that the 2017 budget will be a relatively easy fix
compared to the work we'll need to do for 2018. I can't wait.
Round 2 of the budget process will be
next Wednesday night, September 21, at 5:30 p.m in the council
chambers. This meeting, like all the budget meetings, are open to the
public. I don't promise it will be entertaining. But if you're like
me who really hasn't paid close attention over the years to the
bottom line or has taken for granted the quality of services we
continue to be able to supply to our constituents, it may be
enlightening to say the least.
