Two Council Actions With Long Term Impact

The Council voted tonight to delay the abatement process till May on the property at 441 and 444 Dual Blvd. I was disappointed that the Council on a vote of 4-1, I voted against, decided not to enforce City Ordinance. I believe this will lead to many more issues in the future. If we are not going to enforce our ordinance on a site that has dozens of junked boat trailers, boats and other junk since November of 2006 what message are we sending? The property owner is going to try to auction these items in April. I stated that the property owner knowingly violated ordinance by bringing this junk into the city, he did it several years ago causing the City to take legal action at that time. The question this leaves is what will the Council do in future cases and what message does this send to staff about enforcing future violations.

The other item I wanted to follow-up on tonight is the $200,000 in “excess” revenue. I wanted this to be used for tax reduction and debt reduction. The Council on another 4-1 vote, again I was against, voted to use $125,000 for tax reduction…which is great… but to put the remaining $75,000 into another fund to be spent. $55,000 of this amount was designated for warning siren and crossing arms on rail road tracks. Great use of money except these items should be placed in the budget. The Crossing Arms will not be placed till 2008 and 2009. Plenty of time for the 2008 budget process that will be completed this year.

The warning siren is again a good project but why is it only a needed item when extra dollars are available but not 3 months ago when we finalized this year’s budget? Again this could be budget for. I did say that if there was a matching fund amount or grant that could in the long run save us money then it might make sense to consider the expense. This is not the case to spending this money this year.

This process will create $75,000 in new spending beyond the 6% increase already approved for this year. $75,000 is about 2 ½% of our property tax levy. We need fiscal discipline to drive taxes lower and to stay on budget. These items need to go through the budget process so the Council will have to make the tough decisions on where to spend our taxes.

When I was asking for a special election to fill the vacant council seat the argument was made that the $600 to $2,000 would cause taxes to go up. Well $75,000 more was spent tonight than was budgeted…..and yet there was no concern about increased taxes. When there is “extra” money lying around government will spend it. Remember this when we go into budget talks this summer.