Is everyone just playing 'hot potato' and kicking the problem down the road?
You may recall a few years ago Mr. Hickey, then head of public works presented council with an asset management plan which indicated we were underfunding our infrastructure replacement costs by about $12,400,000. 00 per year. This would represent about an 18% tax increase across the board from that point forward to cover the shortfall if it were in fact accurate. Think about that, if we wanted to make sure our water, sewer and roads were properly funded, our taxes should have been increased by about 18% three years ago, and that would be a permanent increase on top of all the other increases that have come down the pipe.
Back in 2010, the city manager of the day Mr. Kenning advised to do nothing about the infrastructure shortfall until 2013. Coincidentally it seems that is the same year Mr. Kenning took early retirement.
The reason given for not dealing with the issue at the time had nothing to do with sound fiscal management or seeing that our spending priorities put water, sewer and roads at the top of the list. At that time we were in the middle of dropping industrial taxes to line up with residential taxes, cutting the industrial rate by nearly 50% if memory serves. The loss of that tax revenue was being made up by shifting those losses to the residential tax base and adding more to properly fund water sewer and roads wasn't a good idea according to Mr. Kenning. Mayor Ruttan and council agreed and nothing was done about this shortfall until last year when a 'special' 1% levy was added to fund water, sewer and roads.
Numbers Don't Add Up........
Everyone seems to agree that the water, sewer and roads reserves are being underfunded by about $10,000,000 per year based on historical spending. We are now told that Mr. Hickey and Mr. Clemens have crunched the numbers and feel that the special 1% dedicated tax (which increases every year, so that by year five it is actually 5%) will be adequate by year five to fund infrastructure needs for the next 20 years. It is still not quite clear to this simple fellow as how a $10,000,000 shortfall is being adequately funded with a 1% per year tax.
I wonder if the reason for not properly funding our water, sewer and roads is because staff and council feel that would make it more difficult to keep increasing staff wages by $1,000,000+ each year, or having a spare $16 million to build shiny new staff offices.
I can't imagine this council will wrestle with the important priority of properly funding water, sewer and roads as Mayor Ruttan is now into his sixth year as Mayor and I have yet to see his council give any kind of policy direction to city staff when it comes to this issue.
I say...Not to worry man (in my mayoralty Jamaican accent).
ReplyDeleteWe soon may not have good roads, but we will have spiffy theatres and a well-funded cultural plan!