Join the mayor to see what he wants to blow taxpayer money on over the next few years. I will have a post later today about some specific expenditures.
UPDATE: I just attended the meeting, and before I talk about the Mayor’s address, I first want to rant about something. While I don’t have a problem with an invocation at the beginning of the meetings, I think there should be some requirements.
1) No mention of a particular religion or God
2) Keep it brief
The pastor made a 10 MINUTE Invocation. I almost fell over, on top of that, his accent was so deep, I didn’t even know what he said. I caught Jesus, Israel, God and Amen. As it got into about 8 minutes, I started looking around the room, peeps were becoming a bit restless, and one city employee had his arm crossed and was giving the pastor a nasty look.
The irony of it all is that while citizens are only allowed 5 minutes for public testimony (you know, talking about city business) A pastor is allowed to rant for 10 minutes about all things Jesus and Christian.
There, my rant is done. I did laugh at the end when he said AMEN, the entire room almost yelled it out with him.
Well, now the budget. This graphic below troubles me. We spend 50% of our budget on debt service, employee wages and benefits and only 23% on actual capital improvements. Now if the mayor thinks this is a ‘prudent’ budget, I would have to disagree.
Think about this for a moment. While capital improvements are an investment in our community and city. Debt service, employee wages and benefits are here today and gone tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, we have to pay city employees a good wage to give us good service, but I have often been a fan of hiring fewer workers at a higher quality. Just look at the city clerk’s office, they had to replace a high quality clerk with 3 separate employees.
The mayor also mentioned in his speech that we have to take good care of the city employees because they also live here. Actually, a lot of them do not. I believe the number of city employees that live outside of the city limits is around 400.
Indoor Pool: 19.4 million (up from 18.5m in March 2013)
Operating Costs:
2013: -$692,729
2014: -$710,168
2015: -$728,152
2016: -$746,699
2017: -$765,824
*Note: All operating costs are negative numbers.
**Source of all numbers: City-Wide Aquatic Facilities Master Plan
I just finished watching Mayor Huether’s budget speech on Channel 16, CityLink. I think I must have been listening to the wrong channel, or the wrong speech, or maybe even the wrong mayor.
I heard words and phrases such as: prudence (regarding city expenditures), maintain financial strength, value for taxpayers, add value to services, try to do things different this year, we (city) are in the service business, living within our means, we do care about our reserves, expenditures in line with revenues, use taxpayers dollars as wisely as we can.
Since Jamison’s announcement about his candidacy for mayor on Tuesday morning, I am willing to bet that we just got a different and drastically revised speech from what we would have otherwise had.
GJ
GJ, could be a repeat of the 2010 campaign….
As time went on, Huether started to sound more and more like Staggers.
That is, until he got into office……
MMM wants desperately for us to think he is spending our money wisely and that he LISTENS to the people!! LOL…………….. like the labeling of aquatic center drawings as “educational material” (which in reality will be city “propaganda”) to disguise a “campaign expenditure” for the indoor aquatic center. That is why we are spending an additional $46,350 for two drawings, one of which will not be used. That’s wasteful, inappropriate spending of taxpayer’s precious money. We do not need $46,350 of drawings for the taxpayers of this community to mentally process how we want our money spent and which projects we want it spent on. MMM is definitely in the campaign mode and he IS campaigning with tax payer’s money. AND if he gets his way he will place an indoor aquatic center on land held without clear title at Spellerberg Park. $19.5m spent on land without clear title is most assuredly NOT PRUDENT SPENDING OF TAXPAYER”S MONEY!!! MMM is CHOOSING NOT to LISTEN and HE IS DEFINITELY WASTEFULLY, SPENDING TAXPAYER’S MONEY!!! IT’S HIS WAY OR THE HIGHWAY, nothing ever changes!!!
He was well coiffed.
PUBLIC indoor pool! Progress on the prairie!
I saw in the Argue Endorser today the council was given the detailed proposed budget 7 minutes before the budget address meeting started. Now that is openness and transparency at it’s finest. But in all fairness they had actually about 17 mintues to review it while Pastor ‘Eat soup at Home’ babbled.
Hidden behind all the BOOM TOWN HYPE is a lovely little property tax raise for all those wonderful citizens of SF. The Argus reports today we can look forward to a 2.3% property tax raise and I predict, more TIFFS for the developers!! We the public can cover some of their share of taxes.
MMM says it is a “pretty grand budget” because we have 18 new positions to fill. For a $19m budget increase those new workers should get fabulous salaries.
In 2010 when MMM took office the city budget was $337m. And for his 2014 budget MMM wants $386m. That is a budget increase of $49m in Huether’s term.
Concerning our city debt, when Huether took office in 2010; total City debt as of December 31, 2009 was $277,285,733. Total city debt as of December 31, 2012 was $398,868,664. As of December 31, 2011 the general purpose legal debt limit for the City was $544.3 million. We appear to be fast approaching our debt limit too! So as we can see MMM has great need to hype our financial picture and lull the electorate to sleep.
If you figure out just what we pay in salaries (not benefits) is about $111,940,000. Now divide that by the # of city employees (1140) and each city employee is making an average of $98,192 a year! This of course, I am sure includes health & training. But it seems like a job with the city is a pretty good gig.
All city employee salaries and wages can be viewed on siouxfalls.org
go to:
HR
Compensation and Benefits
City Employee Salaries
The figures listed are salaries and wages only. The value of benefits is not included. With the exception of temporary and seasonal workers, most city employees’ compensation is well above the average SF worker.
On another note, EVERY year when the city budget is passed it includes a property tax increase. The limit is set by the State, and I believe it is in the 2 to 3% range. It is in the fine print and is usually quietly passed without any discussion by the Council.*
*The exception to this is the years Staggers has been on the Council. Every year he requests that the property tax increase be moved out of the fine print and discussed by the Council.
I wonder what was allotted for Paratransit additions.
Public pools. Public schools!
Joan, I think Huether made it pretty clear in his budget address that public transit was going to be cut or raise fares – we have an EC to subsidize Godammit!
….Huether made it pretty clear in his budget address that public transit was going to be cut ORraise fares….
I think the mayor will ramrod both cuts to paratransit and fare increases. Too bad, cuz those can least afford this mayors ego trip pay the dearest.
Don’t know that I’ve read a city budget where expenditures were more than revenue. Wonder why the mayor never talks about city debt when talking budget. Yep, debt was 277 million less than 4 years ago, now it’s over 420 million.