Last night the Mayor and Council held a continuation of their budget work session; the topic covered was the Capital Improvement Program budget, or CIP. Once again I was not able to watch it, but the video is now available on the web and I will be watching it soon. In the mean time, I will (with permission) paste in here an email that Gaithersblog reader Cathy Drzyzgula sent out to a neighborhood mailing list, addressing some of what happened.
Keep in mind as you read this that the City has about $20 million dollars in the bank that is not allocated to anything except the possibility that they might need it for something someday. In the City’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, this fund balance is on a line labeled “Unreserved and Undesignated”, and at the end of FY06 it stood at $19.8 million. Note also that this is not the same as the money that the City puts aside to save up for large capital projects such as the aquatic center. That fund, at the end of FY06, stood at $13.3 million, or nearly $15 million if you count the set aside for current encumbrances. In FY08, they propose to add $6 million to the capital fund for the aquatic center alone. These numbers compare to total (audited) FY06 revenues of about $40 million, and FY06 expenditures of about $36 million. For FY08, the total proposed budget is $50 million, about $39 million of which is operating costs, and the remainder capital set-asides.
Finally, note that, according to the proposed FY08 CIP, by the end of FY07, they are supposed to have recieved a total of about $3.7 million from the State and County for the aquatic center, out of about $12 million total they are supposed to receive from those two sources by the end of FY10. The other $8.3 million is supposed to be received in FY08 through FY10 — mostly in FY09 and FY10. As far as I know the Council has not addressed what will happen with this project if those funds do not materialize — and keep in mind that Governor O’Malley is currently searching for $200 million in budget cuts. What other project funds will they raid to build this pool?
The proposed FY08 Capital budget was reviewed tonight. The clock tower/plaza project in Olde Towne was funded in the amount of $375,000. The plaza is expected to cost $500,000 and the clock tower $900,000. The Council voted in February to fully fund the clock tower in the FY08 budget. Obviously they didn’t really mean it. It was once again stated that the council fully supports this project, but obviously there are plenty of other projects that they in fact supported, by funding them in the budget. Another alternative would have been to put in $500,000 for the plaza, and start work on it this year. Residents and businesses would actually benefit from the plaza even if nothing happened with the Fishman building for 10 more years. This WOULD do something for Olde Towne. Mayor Katz quoted an email of mine that made this point, but then didn’t follow through by suggesting the plaza should actually be built. I bet it would even make it MORE likely that someone would want to redevelop the Fishman property (next to the train station parking lot).
The argument was made (particularly by Ms. Edens and Mr. Alster), that it didn’t make sense to put money in this project this year, because it will not be built this year. Of course putting money aside in advance is the usual way the City saves money for ALL projects it actually cares about. For example, the Aquatic Center account has $7,629,409 carried over from last year. The City is adding $5,300,000 of city money and $700,000 of state money to the project, even though construction on the pool will not take place until 2009-10. But the money will be needed eventually when it is built, and since the City actually intends to build the pool they are saving ahead for it. Olde Towne projects are different, all the other needs of the city are met first, including cushions for unknown costs and variables, and then if there are some crumbs available or they can get a grant to pay for it, they will give some to a project like this that has been waiting for 10 years. Even though there weren’t enough crumbs left over to keep their promise, we are supposed to believe that this project is somehow equal to other projects that got funding. NOT. Another year, another excuse is my reaction.
A Request for Proposals for redeveloping the Fishman building is supposed to be issued in December 2007 (7 months from now). It was stated that this would result in proposals being available in the fall, which doesn’t make sense to me. I can’t imagine a development plan will be in place for that property by the next budget cycle, so they already have an excuse in hand for next year too.
It was also stated that the purpose of the fund raising effort for the clock tower project was to build community. Have any of you ever been asked to support this project by making a donation? I wonder what community they are talking about.
Over and over the refrain was “money is tight, we need to be conservative, we have to be concerned about future spending”. I guess that explains why the city is building a $21 million dollar pool, which will serve county residents at the same price as city residents with no operating cost contribution from the county. How is that a “conservative fiscal policy”? I don’t see any language that says “Funding the aquatic center is contingent on receiving the budgeted state and county funds”. That would be a realistic caveat that should appear in the budget, if one was actually trying to be conservative.
Cathy D.